Bator heartbreak

What the heck is going on? I could weep. I have been hatching for MONTHS now and my success rate is sucking. I am so frustrated and angry!

Recap: despite all the talk about perfect humidity levels I became a dry hatcher when I found chick after chick drowned in its shell. I came to my own conclusion that hot blowing air is a stupid way to incubate, since it causes humidity problems that we then have to remedy. BUild a better bator became my focus.

I built several. Most of them were not better.

However I feel this waterbator idea has serious potential. I have tweaked this design several times and since going with the digital temp controller, I have had amazingly steady temperatures! Never had such good temps in all my life with any bator. And yet, my hatches are TERRIBLE!

My fertility rate is almost 100%, but eggs die along the way or worst of all, make it right to the finish line and die there. AAAGGHGHGH!

I break open and look at all dead eggs. In former bators there was lots of slime in the eggs and the chicks had pipped the membrane and drowned. Their yolks were still way out.

Today I have 4 lousy eggs left from 12 that I started with (8 died along the way, a staggering loss) all of them were bumping, then 2 quit. Just got still and quiet. I broke in for a look and sure enough, dead. THey looked PERFECT! There was no slime in the egg, their yolks were completely inside the belly, there is no reason in the world those chicks should not hatch. But they didn't. I could weep.

I even wrote Higgins and asked about the possibility of a lethal gene. She of course gave me so much information my head exploded. It could be a lethal gene, it could be nutrition of my hens, it could be how I store the eggs, it could be some unknown problem with the bator. She suggested getting a dozen eggs from some other source and sticking them in the bator. If they hatch then the problem is not likely the bator, but something in my own flock.

I know there is nothing anyone can say and I don't know why I'm posting this other than to express my pure disappointment and frustration. I may end up with 2 lousy chicks .With my luck in 4 months I'll discover they're both roosters. IF they hatch! I'm going to go pour a drink now and moan.

I had a whole season of poor hatches, while CynthiaM takes eggs from here and hatches 13 out of 15. I don't even have enough to replace the older hens. A new incubator is in the plans here.

As discussed at breakfast the other morning, maybe we should do parallel hatches with your waterbator and my 'bator (which reminds me - Cindi, I should get it back from you sometime). That said too, perhaps 1/2 my birds' eggs and 1/2 your birds' eggs in each 'bator would paint a better picture? I'm willing to do it as long as you keep any chicks that hatch.

I am with Tara. Get some outside eggs and hatch them. If they hatch successfully, the problem is your birds. If they don't, your problem is the incubator. At least then you will be able to look in the right direction for problems.

Ah blick. Bummer. I wonder if you will ever find out. From my first thought, I think the chicks just ran out of steam, oops, mean energy and didn't make it to the final countdown, which is hatch. That was what first came to my mind. So many things I have read about incubation, and somewhere, who knows where, seems to me that I read something about chicks that are good all the way through, then get too tired to pip the shell, seems to me I remember something about that the chicks were too hot, just like how tired we get on a hot day. Seems to me that is what I recall. Maybe it was a post that Jonny Anvil put here about incubating the last couple days at a cooler temperature. Just can't remember. Maybe you just got some weak birds there that are making crappy babies that don't live. I don't know. Who knows. And you will probably never know. Sometimes I too have a crappy hatch. Like those frickin' 72 eggs I tried to hatch in February (or was it March) last year, and none made it. As the time went on the numbers got higher and higher and higher for good hatching. And then disaster when I hatched some eggs for BigRock, total hatch failure. This was summertime with her (Rosewood, your Delawares rocked with hatching and so did Dan Smith's Barnevelders and Welsummers) second hatching of eggs. I won't hatch eggs for anyone anymore, too much sadness on my part if there is failure. Just for me. I was traumatized. Gack, poor you Uno, not a clue, and you will probably never find out. Have an awesome day, CynthiaM.

Farmchiq, I will bring your incubator on Sunday (and I got garden food for you too, smiling, think red, what is red and comes on a little bush, and oh yes, orange and grows in the ground, and yes, white and has separations you can make to cook with, think bad breath.....see ya for dinner at Daughter's).

I know you are sensitive about humidity discussions uno but I would suggest weighing the eggs (as a group) before you start to incubate them and then weighing them every 5-6 days to build a graph of per cent weight lost. With a scale that is accurate to 1g (like a kitchen scale) this will tell you if the humidity is too high or too low based on weight loss. You can divide the weight by the number of eggs each time so that if you need to remove eggs as you go it will have less impact on your information.

Too high a humidity the chicks are too big to hatch. Too low and they are too weak to get out of the egg.

I would need to go dig out my incubator manual or do some quick online reading to recall what the correct range for weight loss is but if you want to try this I can definately get you the numbers.

Really there are only four variables when incubating:
Eggs you start with (nutrition, fertility, per-incubation storage)
Turning while incubating
Temperature
Humidity

The trick is to figure out which one(s) are causing the issue. And it's easier said than done. Sometimes incubating side by side with another machine and noting the differences is a great way to figure it out.

I have a gold scale. It's pretty darn accurate. I think the weight loss is supposed to be around 14%, give or take.

The waterbator does not have a tight lid, I cover it with a towel so humidity can escape. But all this year the humidity in this house has been very, very high. So high in fact I have commented to Hub more than once that we better star investigating our plumbing since there has got to be a leak somewhere! I don't think houses should have 60 - 75% indoor humidity.

Farmchiq, I may take you up on that offer. OR I may call it quits and throw my hands up in despair. I only have room for so many different aged chicks and there is no more room at the inn, as they say.

uno wrote:I have a gold scale. It's pretty darn accurate. I think the weight loss is supposed to be around 14%, give or take.

The waterbator does not have a tight lid, I cover it with a towel so humidity can escape. But all this year the humidity in this house has been very, very high. So high in fact I have commented to Hub more than once that we better star investigating our plumbing since there has got to be a leak somewhere! I don't think houses should have 60 - 75% indoor humidity.  

Farmchiq, I may take you up on that offer. OR I may call it quits and throw my hands up in despair. I only have room for so many different aged chicks and there is no more room at the inn, as they say.

Uno, I had troubles early this year when the humidity was high also...initially in the bator, but later when I started dry hatching I still struggled as my house humidity was high for months and months, and I realized with the combo of high humidity and the vents (which had worked later in the year the year before), that I didn't have enough air in my bator...the poor chickies that were hatching were not getting enough oxygen - I didn't figure it out though till I started having a bit larger hatch and saw the chickies not really reacting to me going into the bator, really lazy and listless and it got me to thinking that something wasn't right...I started cracking my brooder bator a bit at hatching time and saw an instant improvement. I thought I had lots of vents, but I think they might have been too high up to benefit from the air circulation. My couple of late summer hatches saw some really good hatch rates and 100 percent of lockdown eggs hatching. I have a homemade bator too....

Cheers,