New To Incubation - Disasters Can Happen

For people raising chickens, you will understand this. For those new to chickens as I am, you may not fully get this until it happens to you.

 Here I was, incubating my first six chicken eggs. Starting small because I was not sure how this would all play out. All six of my Lavender Orpington’s had seemed to be progressing normally. I was doing my normal checks, had some issues with candling, so I decided to just leave all the eggs in the incubator and hope for the best.  We get to day 18 and it is time for lockdown. I raise the humidity as I was told, and I was doing my final check on the eggs and I only heard one of them peeping inside the egg, AND it already had a pip! Super early for a pip and a bit scary as we had to take the eggs out to do a check and I read that it could cause some issues.  So back in the incubator we go, and I was struggling to keep the humidity above 60%. I was stressing out so bad.  FINALLY, at day 23 an egg is hatching! 32 hours go by and she's struggling, she has the same hole and it looks like her wing is slightly stuck out of the shell, and she isn't moving.  I find out that my daughter opened the incubator while I was in the shower and I go in full panic mode. What do I do? Do I help the chick, do I not help the chick? I wait another day. Still no forward progress, I do a ton of research and it was decided that I help the baby hatch. I carefully take off the outer shell while leaving the membrane attached, just enough so baby is able to push through if she can and I notice that the membrane in some places is drying out and that the baby is COMPLETLY backwards and still stuck. I put her back for a few more hours to see if she can get out.  I come back and she is still not moving but chirping and pecking away at the same hole. Finally, I realize she literally is not able to rotate, she's too big for her egg. This entire process stresses me out because at this point, I know that I shouldn't be opening the incubator because the other eggs are at risk, but I don't know how to save her. Do I let her die in her egg or do I risk it again and help some more? I pull out a second incubator and get it to the proper humidity and heat levels, quickly move over the remaining five eggs (this was HOURS later) and then I finally help Baby Hope out of her shell completely. Her yolk sac was completely absorbed, and she was good to go, she was just stuck.  So, I put her in the incubator in hopes of normal recover. Fast forward to Day 1 of life. She isn't drying off and membrane is still stuck to her body. What is going on! I don't understand. 

 

I find out she is what they call a sticky chick, and she can't even stand. I do more research and I help clean her up and get the membrane off in hopes of getting her well. She seems to be doing better, we just can't get her to stand up. I realized that maybe she needs to be in the brooder, so I swap her over there.  Sadly, this was the mistake I made that cost her, her life. The brooder was a bit too much for Baby Hope, and this is what killed her.  Though it was finally helping her dry out after her several baths, it was slightly too hot for her due to all that she went through. The stress and new environment quickly killed her.  I can't say for sure if she was going to be able to survive as she wasn't able to stand up on her own, she kept falling over to her left every time she tried to stand up. But I do know it was my fault completely that she died. Being a first-time hatcher, and chicken owner I was devastated, and I cried for hours. We buried her in the backyard and I know in the future two things, I will be investing in a really expensive industrial incubator if I ever do this again, and I will make sure that I put a pad lock on the doors if I am not around to prevent them from being opened before they should.  It doesn't matter if you tell your kiddos to not open the doors, if they are excited to see a baby, and they can't see in, they will open that door to get a closer look. It was a hard lesson for all of us that had been involved. 

Needless to say, the other eggs did not hatch after 27 days.  I finally called it and we went ahead and did a final check to see if they had lived. I pulled out my stethoscope to listen for peeps or any signs of life and there had been none. We decided to open the eggs and see where they had died. One egg was not fertilized at all. The other four seemed to have made it full term and died right around day 18 when the humidity was having some issues as they had drowned in their eggs. Incubating is a tough gig if you have never done it before. But I do recommend it if you have the patience and acceptance of knowing that you may not be successful your first time around.