Quail incubating problems, need serious help here..

[navet]

I am not looking for rearing help, but i am looking for help advice and answers regarding hatching quail eggs.
I have never done this before but sadly my friend had a few problems and i had to take on the job..
I have searched for days an i can not find anything ONLINE that will help me with my questions (people need to provide more images online...it'd help us new people a lot!)

If you have experience and can help me here...plus provide links to other advice that would be amazing.

My problem is, i am struggling to check fertility with my eggs.
They have been incubated starting from the 16th so 6 days now (7 if you consider it is nearly 2am here...)
I candled them after day three to see how they were and they had a small red "blob" inside all of them...
It is ONLY day six some have a bigger "blob" / embryo , and a few of them have such a large embryo that is almost taking over the shell, i can see them and the air sac.

Therev has been no change except in size and weight.

My problem is, because the shells are so spotted and some are really dark i can not see any veins on any of them, and i can not work out if this is progress or if the embryo has died and is showing as such.. (as a yolk shadow, but i thought they looked black not red?)
There are no red rings and the embryo on most still move (not sure if a few are stuck to the sides as they are still rather small) but they are in there.

I need help working out:

1: Which are still alive
2: Are some progressing too fast or just dead?
3: After only 6 days, could they be progressing faster for any other reason ? (maybe they were incubated a little before i got them? or something else?)

I am so stuck...this is driving me crazy.

Thank you guys..

If it helps, incubator is fan assisted, no egg turner (done by hand..) and at 37.6 celsius.
I have seen a couple of the "fuller" eggs move in the incubator, and not because of the fan i placed one down and the egg shook a little and shifted half a centimetre... i am wondering if this is an egg close to hatching ..? If so, how do i know which are and are not? I can transfer the egg elsewhere but after 6 days...i'm worrying about these guys.

Wonderinf if i did something wrong or if they are all at different stages in development.

A few have moved a bit, i know this due to a few having slight scratches, not to the membrane, all on the outter shell. But i really don't know what i'm doing right now haha. I am hoping someone still reads things on here and can help...the last post i saw was from 2010.. (via my phone!)

5 minutes ago

 

[Marigold]

Hi Navet, it sounds as if your friend my have started incubating these eggs and then you took over, is that right? Or did he /she just order them and then find he needed to get you to incubate them?
Assuming they have been incubated for only 6 days there is absolutely no possibility of the hatching so the movement you saw must have been caused by something else.
Most quail breeders don't bother candling eggs as even with good equipment it's so difficult to see anything past the strong patterns on the shells. No harm will come to the hatch if you just leave them and see which ones don't make it after the rest have emerged and remove them then. If all the eggs are clean and intact when they go into the incubator, with a relatively short incubation period of 18 days you are unlikely to have any explosions. At this time of year fertility probably won't be great, but you just have to be patient and let them get on with it, no need for worries.
I don't know why you are only seeing posts from 2010, there are quite a few interested people posting here more recently.
Do let us know how you get on.

 

[navet]

Thank you for responding. As far as i am aware my friend did not incubate them, but i can't be sure if the person he got them from did..

I tried a float test on a few today, 6 out of 7 sunk...the 7th i was concerned about already because it weighed practically nothing and it looked like it was no where near as caught up as the rest (looked like it did when i started incubating)

My other concern is that a few of the eggs look like they may have been incubated already and they seem to be a lot bigger (inside i mean..) on a few you can see the dark part inside is almost taking over the shell, and according to the test, probably alive, but then half of them you can only see half of the egg being dark, as if they are still growing slowly.. I can't fathom if this is because the chick is just going to be bigger than the rest or if it is because it is nearer the hatch date than the rest.

Not sure if this makes any sense, but i'm half asleep and have no idea what i'm saying haha.

 

[Marigold]

I would advise you to just keep them in the incubator, leave well alone, don't touch them apart from turning by hand, and don't try candling or float tests. Float tests will affect the temperature of the eggs and also the humidity when the shells are immersed, not good when quail eggs need relatively dry conditions to hatch successfully, as I said yesterday. You wont get any useful information by these tests, and really there's nothing you can do except wait and see what happens. If you think some of the eggs might have been partially incubated before the others started off, then they may possibly hatch early, though with so much disturbance through being transferred between incubators it's possible these may not make it. However, quail chicks are remarkably tough and not difficult to hatch if fertile to begin with, so you may be lucky.
If you think some may possibly hatch early, you should get a brooder and heat lamp etc set up ready now, and test out the max/ min temperature inside it, especially overnight when the house will be colder. I found I had to learn how much to lower the lamp at night to keep them warm in the cold, and then how to raise it again in the morning. The brooder needs the lamp on for several hours before the chicks go in, so all the bedding etc has a good chance to warm up. It will need to give them the same temperature as the incubator for the first day or so. Normally you would leave the chicks in the incubator to dry off for 24-48 hours after hatch, as I'm sure you know, but if you get some hatching early, you may need to transfer them before the others are ready.