Mama hen sat on the unhatched eggs two extra days, then was done trying.
Of 7 eggs, 4 hatched, one was rotten, and two contained fully formed, dead chicks.
That is almost 30% of the latter.
Could the shells have been too hard? Experts say do not assist chicks in hatching,
they "need" the struggle. Maybe a wee hole would be nice - plenty of struggling left
to do.
Fitsy
Fully formed chicks dead in egg
There can be a lot of reasons why the chicks do not make it out....I think it would be unusual for the egg to be too hard.
"Experts" have said for a long time that chicks "need' to struggle to emerge or they will not be healthy. A lot of people tell you that they need it to make their legs function. But in my experience, chicks that have trouble hatching frequently have serious leg deformities. So it is the deformity that makes hatching difficult, not that helping them causes deformities.
A chick that is having trouble hatching is frequently weak or has some sort of physical problem...but it can also be that there is something wrong with the environment that is making it hard to complete hatching (e.g. low humidity).
Helping a chick to hatch is not as easy as it sounds...but it can be done. There are sites that describe how to do it. It has to be done very carefully or the chick will bleed to death.
I have helped several chicks hatch over the years. Only one did not make it, the rest are growing and doing well or full grown. You do have to be very careful, and I always leave something for them to have to "push" their way out of. One chick was backwards in the egg and trying to hatch on the narrow end. I pulled of some shell about 3/4 of the way, sort of like if the chick had pecked it off itself, but I left the membrane. The chick pushed itself out and is now a healthy beautiful almost 5 month old Silkie hen.
Sometimes they die in the shell because of a deficiency, we have had this happen as well and it is discouraging.
This is the best site I've found to describe how to help a chick hatch:
http://www.silkiechickens.com/helping_chicks_hatch.htm
Thanks very much, Catscan and smedgekles! And that link about helping chicks
hatch is a wonderful eye-opener!!!
Fitsy