Incubation problems

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I have an Rcom suro incubator and have just had my first hatch with it.
A lot of the chicks seem to have had problems getting out. I set it at
37.5 degrees and 40% humidity for first 18 days and 60% humidity for
the last 3 days. Many of the chicks could not break through and i had to
help. Wondering if anyone knows what the problem might be.
 
It can be a number of things - but my first guess is they are pure breeds? This can happen with them if they have been bred closely. The closer they are and the longer they are bred like that, the less vigour they have and become harder to hatch. Breeders will introduce a cockerel from a different blood line to improve vigour but don't like to do that as you are introducing a whole new mixture of genes and you don't know what else you are going to get with future generations.

If the breeding stock isn't in great health you can also get fertile eggs but weak chicks.

It could be a few other things - see the bottom of this table in this Incubation troubleshooting guide but my hunch is the incubator is pretty accurate and not the source of the problem.

The King Suro maintains temperature and humidity pretty well from what I have seen- I'm reviewing one from interhatch at the moment (hatch due next Thursday) and it's been spot on so far.

Tim
 
Tim said:
It can be a number of things - but my first guess is they are pure breeds? This can happen with them if they have been bred closely. The closer they are and the longer they are bred like that, the less vigour they have and become harder to hatch. Breeders will introduce a cockerel from a different blood line to improve vigour but don't like to do that as you are introducing a whole new mixture of genes and you don't know what else you are going to get with future generations.

Tim
Click to expand...
I don't have experience of chicken breeding,but what you mention tim sounds like 'line breeding' in dogs.
Where you would be mating cousin to cousin for example,or is it a bit closer,more like father to daughter,mother to son or brother to sister etc?
At one time I could watch a a class of dogs being shown and know which kennel a dog had come from from it's type.Line breeding and in-breeding can be very popular because breeder's find it easier to select good stock from the moment they are born.Only,as well magnifying the good traits within your chosen breed that you want,you are also magnifying problems.
Surely,it is always better to outcross occasionaly,i would have thought even with cockerels,it is possible to select good tempered quality cockerels that are not closely related to breed,an outcross from your own stock. Maybe swap or something with another reputable breeder to widen gene pools etc.
I don't have any experience of breeding chickens(I'm sure it shows),so maybe these sort of things are already in place within breed clubs etc.
I take it all your chicks are fine they're now out Murt?Bet they're really cute and thriving.
 
Yes Lydia, that's exactly what happens - it's no different to dogs. You keep a closed flock and work to improve your line by 'line breeding' which is really just 'not as close as in-breeding'. You eliminate traits you don't want and eventually get fewer of these and more of what you do want. With a large enough flock / gene pool at the beginning, you can carry on for some generations, but eventually you usually end up having to introduce new blood to increase the gene pool again as hatchability usually starts to get effected.

It sounds easy, introducing a new cockerel from another known / good strain but breeders only do this when really necessary since it introduces so many unknowns that can show up in future generations. No strain is perfect and after years of eliminating undesirable traits, they don't want to introduce some more...

The funny thing is people sell hatching eggs on ebay and show birds that look very, very good. They also say 'running with an unrelated cockerel' which seems to be the buzz at the moment. In reality, two unrelated birds could throw up all sorts of imperfections and the youngsters may look very different to their parents! It's only when you have bred from them for a few years and hatched a large enough number of chicks that you can see what they are producing.
 
Thanks Tim,so it is very risky to start with un-related birds basically,or at least ones that are not 'line bred ' or slightly 'in-bred'.I suspect that a lot of ppl (like myself) do not have enough room to have a big enough flock to start with.In a perfect world we could all have 2 or 3 of our own flocks that started off with seperate bloodlines, so could outcross when needed with our own flocks.

Oh for a perfect world.........
 
Yes, it all depends what you want of course. You usually get pretty good results breeding two of the same thing together but specialist breeders who show birds will take care introducing new blood.

There's chickens and chickens! Personally I don't show my birds but I do try to improve my line and I think you should always try to do the best you can and not breed brother-sister or breed deformities in and so on. If you want to have high hatch rates then go for unrelated parents.

In an ideal world, yes, you would simply get another breeders bird to out-cross but you do have to be careful because you are introducing unknow genes that could be making things better or worse.

Anyway, I hope the chicks have survived...
 
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