Incubation miracle

A couple days ago on day 19, 12 and 5 respectively, the plug to my incubator was pulled out and I did not notice until the eggs were quite cold. I suspect it may have been off 3-6 hours. Horrors! Well this morning I awoke to the sound of peeping! And as soon as I can move my achy, 49 year old bones out of the bed I will go see how many survived their in-egg chilling. I suspect the eggs earlier in their hatch will not be as lucky, but we will see in a few weeks time.

I think you may be surprised Sue, I have had power off for far longer than that and had good hatches. Sometimes it will delay a hatch a bit, but cooling does far less damage than overheating!!

Let us know how many are out and what they are.

I sure agree about the heat being far worse than the cold. I am wondering how this will affect the upcoming 2 hatches that were in there. They contained some pretty special Houdan eggs and I was going to stop hatching now, but I think a couple more hatches are needed to make sure.

7 out of 15 hatched so far and more are pipped.

The heat is ok being off for a while. At least it seems to be. Think of eggs as a mass (well they are) but once a mass heats up, even when there is not constint source of heat the eggs well still have remaing heat on the inside. So the out side of the egg maybe cold but the inside well most likely be warm!

Don't give up. I had a power outage while I was out at work, not sure how long for sure the power was off but it's always a while as the trucks have to ferry over. My shifts are 10 hours, so could have been a while. I lost many eggs but still got 10 - 3 Barnies, 3 Wellies and 4 wheaten marans. And these chicks are the most vigorous little chunks I've had!

Glad to hear that you have peeping!

I think in nature eggs sometimes get cooled when Mama gets off and is delayed getting back to the nest. Eggs deal with this better then getting too hot, which probably doesn't happen so often when Mama's in charge. I guess that would be why eggs take cooling better then overheating.... at least that's my theory. Not sure if I explained it very well as my brain was fried (just came in from Mowing in the hot sun).

14 / 15 eggs hatched!

wow, impressive!

Amazing, eh? and these eggs were COLD!

Next Tuesday I have another bunch that were a week from hatch when they chilled. We will see...

There's a theory out there (which makes sense to me) that hatching is actually enhanced by a cooling off period, every now and then. Broody hens STILL have a better hatch rate than the best incubators, and what other factors vary? I can't think of any (which is maybe more of a comment on my imagination than anything else).

As already noted - overheating, not so good.

I recall reading about this, IPF. Do you have any links or information?

Seems to me I read somewhere that the new Brinsea Incubators have a cooling period....

I think I will have to go back to their website and recheck and reread that... I may have misunderstood.

A week later now and the second bunch has hatched. 6 out of 6 eggs. I can't believe this! The last eggs affected will hatch next Tuesday. Let you know what happens.

With only 6 hours off the eggs would not have even cooled. Great you are having good hatches. Keep us posted on the last one.

I'm following this with interest, and cheering for you and your brood Sue! Great news. Thanks for the updates. It's really reassuring to know.

The third and second last hatch is happening right now. 8 of the 15 eggs have hatched so far and more onthe way...

Looks like I have 12 out of the 15 hatched.

Doesn't sound like the power outage gave you any trouble at all!

One more hatch left. These ones were put in five days before the outage. I will check back here in a week's time.

Finally my last post here!

The eggs that were 5 days in the incubator have hatched. 16 out of 16- 100% hatch! Woohoo!

Being chilled for about 6 hours seems to have not really affected the hatch rate in any way and no chicks died in the shell at that time.

That's amazing! well done!!

Why can't I find the dancing banana emoticon when I need it most?!

Here you go Heda!

Exactly what I wanted! Thank you - says exactly how I feel!