Thoughts on helping hatch.

I help chicks hatch. Sometimes I go in and scoop out chicks who aren't even making an effort to hatch. Those chicks get a stern talking-to.

Yesterday as I was contemplating a caesarean delivery of some slow pokes, Horse Daughter asked me, in a rather snotty tone , aren't you introducing weak genetics into the chicken gene pool by helping them hatch? I thought my reply was well thought out and showed a true understanding of the situation. I said, shut up and mind your own business. This is the fall back line people use when there is no good reason for what they are doing other than they feel like doing it.

But I had to ponder her question, a question and debate that comes up over and over here and on every chicken site. Let me say at the outset, my views will insult some people, people I consider my friends and it is not my aim to insult.

Yes I do help chicks hatch. Do I believe that this is introducing weak chicks? Not for a second. I think that is the biggest line of bunk perpetuated on the poultry public that ever existed. Allow me to explain.

I do NOT help chicks hatch that have been incubated by a hen. This distinction is critical !!

The moment you remove eggs from a hen, who is the gold standard in egg hatching, and toss those eggs into an incubator, which is a far cry from optimum hatching conditions, it is the interference of humans that compromises the life of an egg, and NOT the genetic material in the egg. I feel that when I watch chicks struggle and die while I stand there saying, only the strong survive, what I really ought to say is, I am comfortable inflicting death on chicks by stuffing them in this little, ridiculous box but rather than own the disadvantage I have caused them, I will pretend this is a genetic thing and thus not feel obligated or responsible for their failure to hatch.

Most eggs under hens, hatch. Incubators have a much higher failure rate. Is this because the eggs in the incubator are weaker genetically? NO! This is because the environmental conditions in an incubator make hatching an onerous and risky event. It is the incubator itself that causes dead chicks, NOT the genetics. I think by NOT helping a stuck chick, you have no idea what genetic potential you are losing. But we stubbornly insist that it is weakness that causes failed hatches, when it might just be you have no clue how to operate your incubator. Therefore failure to hatch can be attributed to HUMAN ERROR and no fault of the chick. But we make the chick pay.

If any other farm animal has trouble delivering or the baby has trouble surviving, we take measures to preserve that life and aid that birth. You are a bad farmer indeed if you stand by with your finger up your butt while your lambs/ewes, cows/calves, sheep/lambs, mares/foals drop over like flies. And yet dead chicks we accept as if they are of no consequence.

I think this says more about our view of the value of poultry than it does about their genetic rigour. But we feel better saying our lack of interference is for the' good of the genes', that puts an ever so much better spin on the situation. Almost sounds like we're doing the world a service. But don't you believe it, it's a falsehood.

I do believe that eggs under hens that do not hatch have a solid, real reason to not hatch. Eggs that I have incubated that do not hatch can be blamed directly on me. Thus I feel obligated to help. That is my nature. If I make the mess, I clean the mess up. If I am able to get a chick out of the shell alive, living or not is up to the chick. I have done what I can as carefully and skillfully as I can, but I cannot guarantee survival. All I can do is offer the chance to survive, and I feel that is my duty, since I put those eggs in the bator in the first place.

Imagine you drive to work everyday through a swamp and have a big 4x4 to do it with. Then one day someone steals your 4x4 and you have to get to work on a bicycle. You get stuck in the swamp, obviously. You struggle. You are not supposed to be in a swamp on a 10 speed, that is just not how one traverses a swamp! Someone comes by and watches you, but does not toss you a line because if you are meant to get out of the mud, you will. Seems kind of cold in light of the terrible situation you have been placed in by the moron who stole your 4x4. This is exactly what we do to chicks when we put them in the incubator. We shove them into a swamp on a 10 speed. Me, I toss them a line. It has nothing to do with genetics, and everything to do with the situation those eggs find themselves in, thanks to me.

This is why I help chicks out of eggs.

That was a good argument put forth Uno! I like your powers of reasoning   more power to you!


I have often wondered about natural vs artificial brooding and it seems to me that we would have selected strongly for chicks that hatch under artificial brooding since the majority of chicks hatched are from incubators.
I agree that hens can provide much closer to perfect incubating conditions than we could in an incubator.
So does anyone give their "special" eggs to hens to incubate?  Or has anyone found that some eggs which are a little more tricky to hatch in an incubator can be hatched much more successfully under a hen.
Makes sense to me, that some chicks in eggs could be more adaptable and  can handle temp and humidity fluctuations better than others, not sure if this would be a breed thing or individual variation though?
I have heard that male chicks can handle more temp fluctuations than female chicks can, as in if your incubator temp was off you might hatch more boys than girls (some of the female chicks might not hatch) Anyone else heard of this?

Good topic!

What would you say to someone who's incubator has a higher success rate than the hens, Uno? My incubator has close to a 100% success rate with fertile eggs. The hens always have one or two that don't hatch.

I would say celebrate your success! But it still does NOT follow that failed hatches are due to genetic failures. Many people who hatch with bators have great success, but many STRUGGLE. Can it all be blamed on bad genes? No. SOME failed chicks are genetically to blame, but MORE failed chicks are bator compromised, in my opinion.

I agree. The main difference seems to be in quality of incubator. When it became clear that the Houdans were going to be hard to hatch with foam bators and Toybarons and I needed HUGE numbers of chicks to really make a difference in this breed, we both dug deep and bought expensive digital incubators. It has made a world of difference.

I still love my broody girls, though!

.

This is a very timely post for me. One chick just hatched out successfully after my spending hours of frustration on the computer trying to figure out what the humidity should be. Peoples answers were all over the map. I have been in agony thinking about shrink wrapped or drowned chicks. I realized that I am not incubator material. If something happens under the hen and a chick dies, I feel a bit sad but when a chick suffers because" I", didn't get it right, its a whole different story. I have never seen a chick have a problem hatching under a broody. I have seen some squished and some just not even pip, but if they pip they have always hatched. So I agree , if there is some struggle hatching it is my fault and the incubators and yes I would do what I could to help. Incubating feels to me like playing God. I don't like it and am only doing it this time because the hen abandoned her nest 3 days before hatching. Also my fault for not moving her. She was in a nest with another broody. They are now co-parenting 6 chicks. I don't know if any more will hatch. I don't know if I can safely take this one out. I still don't really know if the humidity is right.(55%) It is going to be a long couple of days.

Broody hens sure make wonderful incubators - no worries about temperature or humidity.  Some of you may have followed my broody hen adventures, and know that they don't always make the best hatchers.  I had to rescue and hatch five of our twelve chicks - without an incubator.  Two from the egg-squishing mom pipped in transit, the other three had pipped but were under franken-mom.  As a caring person and careful manager of my flock, I was not about to leave them there to see if she had changed her mind!  In fact, the last egg she pecked and abandoned before I removed it.  I did lots of research, and made up an incubator, and all successfully finished their hatch.  We have to manage our flocks or herds intelligently.  I have learned a lot through this difficult process, and also learned that chicks are tough characters.  Given a chance, they can and will thrive.  However, just yesterday a leghorn hen fell.  She was hobbling and her neck looked a little kinked and a wing was sitting a little low.  Her eyes were bright and alert, but it would not be in her best interests (or ours) to baby her for the rest of her life.  It is the first time we had to put a chicken down, but so obviously necessary.  It hurt because we have had so many problems with only our leghorns (bought 8 chicks last year - only two left, none butchered, various causes), but they are such dear and friendly birds (because we raised them to be) and contribute to my rainbow carton of eggs.  It is very important to achieve balance in our care of the animals we choose to raise, which will vary from person to person, but I think that window of variance should not be too extreme.  The basics of excellence in animal husbandry are the same for everyone - simply happy, well-fed, healthy creatures.  Approaches may differ, but the end results are the same.

Thank you all for sharing your views.

I feel I must also add that even though I help hatch, my survival rate at this is very low.

It is tricky business getting a chick out of an egg. The timing has to be just right and the chick still has to be strong enough to live once it's out. I've had many who I baby along through several hours of hatch help only to have them die in my hand the second they get out. So despite the help I offer, I have added very few 'genetically challenged' birds to the gene pool, most of them die even with my help. (or maybe because of my help, gack!)

Those chicks that pip and find themselves in a wet/slime filled egg die before I get to them. It is FRUSTRATING that I never get the chance to help those ones along. They are dead so fast. It's the chicks that do pip and take another 2 days to make any progress and their peeping gets weaker and weaker. I will step in to help after they've given it their best shot. I only help those who demonstrate some of their own effort at life. Even then, a completely exhausted chick enters the world at a disadvantage and most of them die.

It must also be stated that if you hatch eggs on a LARGE scale, monitoring and knowing who to rescue and the TIME it takes to slowly pick and pull and replace and inspect each one, is simply not going to happen on a large scale. It is physically impossible for one person to caesarean deliver a large number of chicks. This is not a crack and yank procedure. Not if you want them to live, anyway. It would take HOURS to babysit failing eggs on a large scale, and who can do that?

All I am able to do is get a chick out of its egg alive, sometimes. It still has to have the physical strength to live after that. Despite my interference, I doubt that many more birds exist, genetically inferior or not,  since this is a high failure venture, helping to hatch.

It's interesting to read what others do.  

I'll help a chick during hatch if certain conditions are met:

- chick must have pipped externally and at least attempt to zip the eggshell
- no other chicks in the hatch are compromised (open pips)
- I've been having temp/humidity issues
- the eggs were special and shipped in

Otherwise, no. And any chicks with a visible deformity of any kind are culled right after I discover it. Call me cruel, I call it tough love, and that's just the way I roll. Over my short but so far sweet hatching career I've seen a chick with no eyes, a chick with weird eyelids covering most of its eyeball, a chick with no vent opening, and probably others I can't think of right now.  And of course spayed legs, crooked toes, and cross beaks. Spayed legs are fixed if they can be, crooked toes are allowed to grow until I can tell gender (boys are culled, girls are sold as backyard layers) and cross beaks are culled as soon as detected.  

My survival rate for chicks I've helped is actually pretty good...

eta: definitely agree about having a quality incubator, be it a broody hen or a good machine fine tuned for the job.

Uno, you make me smile. I suppose I am one of those dear friends that you were worrying about insulting about your nice post, smiling....you cannot ever cause insult, because that is just not how to work as a human being, to be insulted by something that someone expresses opinion about. I don't have the time right now to comment on what you have said, an early morning appointment with Dr. Death for one of my chickens, at the abbatoir. Yep a big rooster dude, I'll report his weight here tomorrow....it is surprise who it is, but Sister and I did not kill the old red rooster when she came, when she came, there was not enough time, so off to the processor today....

I do sit on the fence about helping chicks, and will speak more to this, probably tomorrow, if I can ever get my butt out of bed before 6:00, sun up at 6:45 and it is freakin' hot....37 yesterday on our shaded porch, so even more reason to get outside early these days to get stuff done before hot sun takes over. My experience has always been negative with helping chicks out, but you surely do give reason to think about things. Have a wonderful day friend, never worry about insult by reasonable thoughts...just don't happen, CynthiaM.

I helped a barred rock chick out the other day it pipped and sat there. I made the hole bigger and crushed the shell. He is happy and doing fine. I only had one other fertile BR egg and it was fully developed but didn't hatch. I should have helped it out as well. even if it didn't turn out to be show quality it could have been used for something. Supper! I have not had great success hatching. 12 buff orps and 1 barred rock and a few crossbred eggs that were given to me to see if my incubators worked . I have 3 fertile silkie eggs coming up and I hope they hatch. I have few eggs under 3 broody hens. We'll see what happens with them. LAst year without the incubator I only hatch two batches of silkies because they were the only ones that went broody. I am hoping that my next hatch date July 8 has a greater success than my last one.
I will help the little guys out if I can.
Geri

I like the way Flicker Chick summed it up. I also have a list of criteria that must be met. And like I said, many that might benefit from my help die before I can help them, so...lost causes are still mostly lost causes.

Flicker, I have to say you've seen way more weird problems than I ever have! I've never had a chick with no eyes or no vent. But I do cull those who are obviously miserable and not going to make it. I fix splay legs, and sometime curled toes. Mostly I ignore curled toes.

BUT...I know some of you are attempting to achieve something with your chickens and for your purposes, weak chicks are a no go. Although like I say, a chick who does not hatch in my mind cannot really be deemed weak as much as environmentally challenged, which is all my fault. But I can help those chicks since I am not aiming for any goals or standards or uniformity in my flock. They just have to be chickens. That's all.

CYnthiaM! You ended up lugging roo boy off to someone else! You didn't use that killing cone I lugged to your house? What happened? You were such a good student at The Husband's School of Butchery that day. Do you need to sign up for a refresher course? I have some roos I will donate to your cause!

Yeah, I've hatched some strange ones alright. I felt awful because the poor ventless dude took me 48 hrs to realize what was wrong. Now I carefully check every chick as it leaves the hatcher to make sure all necessary parts are there and accounted for. I hate when the little guys suffer needlessly.  

The weirdest deformity I ever read about (and thankfully did not experience firsthand and hope I never will, BANG on wood) was a chick born with a third leg sticking out of it's butt. Talk about a kick in the teeth right off the bat.