HELP! RH been too low in incubator, chick trying to hatch...

Uh-oh, looks like the chicken fairy has struck again..

GG
♣^_^♣

granny, the chicken fairy isn't anything like the stork is it? ^_^

In a way...yes! When she strikes, you begin to think about hatching baby chicks. And then you do...hehe!

This message was edited Jul 5, 2008 1:03 AM

Oh boy....how am I going to explain this to DH...

Start by saying it only takes 21 days---misleading but technically true!

The 21 days until they hatch is the easy part. His big concern will be what do we do with them after that? He knows me and he will immediately know that eating them is totally out of the question. They would be family members that would need a house of their own, daily tending to and I'm sure other things that I don't even know about yet.

Christy, I'm sorry to steal your thread, but I had questions so I could further understand what was going on. Has there been anymore events?

Don't know how I just spent the last 30 minutes reading this thread..haha! I agree with Joan: it is so interesting! And, who knows when we will be on some game show and need to know what 'pipping' means! :-)

Can't wait to see the pics you took of the various stages!

Hi Joan....glad you have found all this interesting. Believe me, I have learned A LOT by it all too. First and foremost I have learned that it is not a good idea to incubate eggs at way too low of an RH........our 1st week or so ran at about 35%, then again it turned out that on our temp/RH reader, the RH part was not reading right so I'm not 100% sure how low it was for how long. When we put a different reader in it maintained an RH of about 50%....where it should have been closer to 60%. If you do decide to hatch your own eggs all the problems I am now having are not the norm. With starting with good fertile eggs, proper RH, temp and turning it really does go pretty smoothly. Catscan is very right in saying that everyone will talk you through everything every step of the way. I am still very grateful that I found this forum and such a wonderful group of people! : ) I'll tell you, there is just nothing better than hatching out your own baby chicks and knowing that in 3 short weeks it went from a fertilized egg to the cutest little cheeping chicks ever! Don't worry about 'stealing' this thread for a minute.......it happens all the time around here and we like to call it hy-jacking.....and I am for sure guilty of it too! What better way to ask something you don't understand than to jump right in and ask? : )

Catscan......what a fantastic way to describe it! I love your comparison to an internal can opener. In 'tinkering' with all these eggs, I have seen the hair line crack the chick makes going all the way around the egg.....I have come to call it the zipper mark. So that leaves me with more questions. I was wondering if the 'zipper' all around the egg is done by the chick before the pipping happens? I was also wondering if the chick kind of spun in a little somersault all around the inside of the egg to make that zipper in the egg?

Here is the update.....I worked on the last little chick in the egg a while ago and things did not go well and I started asking myself a lot more questions about how things work. For this chick in this egg the inside membrane had sucked down on him as it had on the other chicks, but every time I wet it to free him of it, the blood vessels popped back up so I just could not do anything but make sure he was moist and the put him back in the incubator. With the others, this in and out of the incubator worked....I would remove as much of the inner membrane as I could without breaking any blood vessels, put them back in for a little while allowing the blood vessels to 'dry up' a little more and for the chick to get warm and start over. I would break away little pieces of the shell, gently tear away the outer membrane, make sure they were moist and wish them luck with getting out the rest of the way when they were ready. With this one though, I just knew something was not right. I was able to work down the egg from his beak enough that I finally figured it out. He was not in the 'right' position. Instead of his head and feet being up, both of his feet were crammed into the small end of the shell and his head was twisted back. When I found this out I put him back in the incubator......I highly doubt he is going to make it.....he was just so weak.
Just about everything I have read so far has firmly stated 'do not help the egg hatch' or I have helped mine, but only under certain circumstances. So far I haven't seen these circumstances or how exactly for this problem to 'fix' them. I figured that if I did not help them they were goners, so I did. We now have 5 very cute little chicks that I do not believe would have made it had I not done what I did. I am so thankful to everyone that helped me and sent me and gave me different links to look at. With out all of that, I would have had no idea where to begin or what to look for and I would probably have ended up hurting them.

On the baby poults (turkey's) I am having a lot of confusion. I know that the shells are so hard that sometimes they have a hard time getting out of the shell and if you don't help them, they will die inside. I also have no idea what the exact incubating conditions were as their mama did it up until a couple of days ago so I am very torn on when I should help and when to leave them alone. I have helped 4 so far in the same manner as above and the inner membrane has been very dry, just as the chicks have been. Those 4 are still in the incubator in the eggs, with their beaks poking out. Another one started pipping later this morning and because I could see his little egg tooth poking quickly in and out of the hole I left him be. He was out of the shell and bouncing around by 6pm. The inner membrane is stuck to his shell, not loose and not to him. I don't understand how he could have gotten out so well and perfect and his siblings pipped, then quit and are dry inside. Also, I have 3 more that have pipped and then done nothing else. I have no idea if I should bother them or not. They are not progressing any. I'm scared to help them and I'm scared not too. I'll have to let you know what I figure out and what happens later today. It is way past my bedtime and I have a little more 'tinkering' to do, I'm afraid.

Connie.....I have only taken the one pic so far. I'm really the only picture taker and trying to work on the chicks as gently and as fast as I can and get them back into the incubator to warm up has been the biggest priority and challenge. If they get too cold when I'm working on them, I'm pretty sure they will die. I wish I had gotten to take more pics of it all, it has for sure been interesting. There is a bigger window in the incubator the poults are in, so I might be able to get some of them. I will certainly try!

Christy

OK, You are killing me! I haven't hatched (incubated) in about 4 yrs ~ been letting what ever broody hen wants to, hatch any they want.

Now I am getting the CHICKEN FEVER again.......(Remember Cheryl, you don't want the daily tending even though fun or hatching 100's of chickens again, not now)........ Just maybe a peafowl or duck or ............dang. Just may have to go cleaning the incubator again! This too shall pass, IT WILL PASS ???

Someone save me! Please, oh PLEASE! :-)

how long do u giv before u start helping i give it about 24 Hours after pip before helping if it has made no progress since the pip give it about 12 but if it started then stoped 24 thats wat i do how much time do u leave just curious

lucky, can you candle it? or hold it to your ear to listen? don't wait so long that the chick drowns... but don't try getting it out too soon... sometiems i tap on the shell or on the top of the incubator, and they peep back...

christy, it is hard to tell. every species varies. we would have hatched out more than two ducks if i had known what i know now, that once they are "ready" the mama duck starts helping with her beak. sure wish i coudl be more help with those turkeys...

and as far as whether it is right to help, well, a hen would do it if she could, don't you think? and also when we do things ourselves we are causing some of the problems that lead to the chicks needing our help, so just consider that if the enviroment had been perfect the hatch would be perfect. when we mess things up a little, then we have to intervene a little...

nice to see you Joan! the chicken fairy knows where you live, i don't suppose DH has a loose tooth? somebody will have to pay up LOL

Cheryl, get your brooder set up, you obviously have the joneses for rasining some fowl... i can set you up with a good deal on chicks to get you started LOL or you can wait for fertile eggs. just stay calm, have some coffee, and start you list of things to do BEFORE chicks, and another things of things you won't be able to do again for a long while during your servitude as ChickenSlave...

Christy, you up yet?

I have to say this time around with chicks, i do know more, thanks to ya'll. And I am more prepared to tackle this adventure. Here is to us ChickenSlaves!!!!!!!! Enjoying every minute of it, of course its not 30 degrees out and raining. Got me a rain coat now just gotta get me some mud boots. I even have the "egg basket" had it before I even got the chicks.

sometiems putting the basket before the chicks, or the chicks before the coop, really DOES work...

well it is still moving heaps so it is fine for now thanks for the help tamara

ladybugs how are the turkeys goin

lucky, gee if it is sitll moving around, i would give it more time. just start worrying when it gets tired and rests too long, that is when you can suddenly lose it, they just give up...

i think i slightly over reacted just a bit lol tinsey bit thats all


honest

where would be the fun of it if we didnt overreact sometimes. Gotta have some drama.

i agree lol

but not too much drama! This has all been about more than I can handle. Real quick update, we are about to head off to the critter auction. We have lots and lots of new babies!! After I got off here this morning it turned into an all night adventure and I didn't get to bed until 6am......got up about 9. Four babies are all out of their shells, dried and fluffed and in a cage with a heat lamp. 3 of them are ones I had to help a lot, 1 is the only one that didn't need any at all. 5 more are out of their shells in the incubator in different stages of tumbling around trying to find their feet. There have been a couple of BIG hair raising moments and I worry about one the most.....everything about his conditions were VERY odd, to the point I am a little shocked he is even out of his shell. There are 2 more that are almost completely out of their shells.....their heads are free and they just need to give that final push with their feet on the shell. 2 eggs left....they have not pipped yet.

Lucky.....I agree with tf, if your little one has gotten this far and still sounds ok, I would give it more time. Your pic was a huge help.....from the looks things, everything is moving along pretty good. I am very new to all of this and aside from helping 1 other turkey poult from another hatch, I have not had to help before now. For all the ones that I have been dealing with, they have looked a lot different than what yours does. All of mine that I helped made a pip or two, then stopped. No holes in the membrane at all. After realizing the 1st one or 2 from each hatch was indeed in trouble, I moved pretty fast figuring the rest might be in the same condition. That is how everything progressed so quickly with the poults.

I think with all the unknown factors with the poults it made it very hard at first. When I helped the chicks they were not very active, except for one who really acted like it was struggling to get out and couldn't because it was still stuck. With the poults, almost all seemed to be fighting at one point or another to get out, so I got a lot more aggressive, figuring they should if they are ready. Along the way I also got to figuring what tf said......that if you are already messing with nature and the way things 'should' go, then you are changing the way it would 'normally' go. I figured that after messing with the eggs, if I didn't follow the babies lead they could very well be ready to be born and not be able to get out. It worked and I couldn't be more tickled!!

Shoot, I gotta go or I'm going to be left behind........catch up more with you all later! I also got more pics!

Christy

good luck, lucky! : )

Awsome there Christy. Have fun at the auction. Maybe this fall I will take what I dont want to keep to an auction. I bet you are so tired. Get ya some rest. You deserve it.

PeaFowlAnjL--No one here will save you! BRAHHHHAAAAA!

well it got out i got woken up this morning by loud cheeps from the incubator

Congratulations!

that's great, we want to see!

i will post som soon

Fantastic! Its so much fun, makes me jealous I am not hatching -- but the work...... LOL

I knew you are all 'hooked'; should have known no one would discourage me from hatching again. It sure is a great wonder to watch them from egg to adult, learning to 'find their feet, eat & drink. Then the crowing & clucking! Think kids grow-up fast!

i remember the first chick i seen hatch it was last year and i was amazed how it went all the way around the egg

Hi all! Sorry to take so long to get back......big lack of sleep going on. PeaFowl.....you know you wanna hatch some cute little baby chicks......don't ya? lol
Congrats Lucky! I can't wait to see pics. How many do you have in the incubator?

Ok, after we got home from the auction, we had more babies that were all dry. We so much going on I have lost track a little, so forgive me if I repeat myself somewhere. As of now, we have 10 dried, fluffy happy turkey poults. They are all in a good size cage with the 5 chicks and are eating and drinking just fine. The one poult that I said didn't look right died. When I 1st started helping him everything looked pretty much like the rest had, but after letting him sit in his shell and warm back up and rest and then checking on him again, he didn't look like the rest. There was this nastly looking smelling green stuff (not poo) that had come up and was sitting on his belly, right under his beak. After working on the shell and membrane for a little while, I noticed that there were huge blood membranes and the blood was very dark colored....totally different than what I had seen at this point. I still don't know what was wrong, but with those conditions, I'm not surprised he didn't make it.

We have one other little poult that has been in the incubator since yesterday morning. The poor thing can not seem to find it's legs. It will get on them for a second every so ofter, but most of the time it spends on its back. This morning I picked him up and held him for awhile. There is something not right about his neck. It seems to stay cocked to the right. I'm thinking that is why it can't stand.......that his sense of balance is being thrown off. Does anyone know if there is anything I can do to save this one? I could swear I read something about crooked necks and Selenium and something else maybe helping, but I can't seem to find that info.

For the 2 eggs left..........in a move of total stupidity and maybe exhaustion......I rushed things and cracked one. I guess I was thinking they 'should' have pipped by now, like the rest did. If we had started them, I would not have dreamed of touching them without a pip first. I sure learned something other than DO NOT JUMP THE GUN AND CRACK AN EGG..........the baby inside was small. I'm not sure, but I think it would have had at least 3 or 4 more days.....maybe more. The only thing I can think of is that mama hen started sitting on the eggs and then laid this one several days later. I didn't know they did that. I thought for sure that when they were ready to sit, they stopped laying eggs, but maybe some don't always do it that way. The baby inside was alive when I cracked it last night........it is not now. I'm trying not to beat myself up too much over it, figuring that if this one had even just 3 more days to go, we would not have left in the incubator on for so long, figured it was not going to hatch and the same thing would have happened. The other thing is, it might not have made it anyway with so long left to go. We only have the stryofoam incubator and not a separate hatcher, so with all the birthing goo and some 1st poo's are in there.........and it is getting pretty rank in there. Really, with the smell alone I imagine I can 'see' the bacteria multiplying by the trillions, so I really think that would have gotten it first and it would not have made it.
I was debating over to tell all of this part because I am feeling pretty 'dumb' about cracking the egg...........but I don't want anyone that reads this now or in the future to make the same mistake, so here it is.

Good news, the 2nd egg that hadn't pipped yet, did so a little while ago so I helped it in the same matter as the rest. He is chilling out (or warming up) in his shell right now and everything is looking like the rest of the healthy ones did, so I am crossing my fingers. I will probably work on him another time or two and follow his lead as to what to do.

I got a bunch of pics of all this with the poults. Only one from the chicks. I have to get the film developed and I'm not sure when that will be, but I will for sure come back and post them.

Thank everyone for all the advice and input. ALL of it was a huge help! It ended up that the trailing mucusy thing the one little poult had was the least of it. Several more had mucusy thinks with blood veins in them, keeping them attached to the egg. Some had very tender looking bellies with raw looking spots too. They got the flour treatment and the ones that needed snipped free, I grabbed a tiny pair of blunt ended manicure scissors, sterilized them with a bit of alcohol, snipped and then floured. One little one was so bad off, she bled really badly after I snipped........I thought for sure I had killed her. I floured her bleeding place really well and the blood kept coming. When I laid her back in the incubator she was bleeding so bad it was running down her leg and onto the bottom of the incubator. The next morning, she was up and just fine. I even had to lift up and flip several of them to find her. I am sure the flour saved her!

This whole time I don't think I said what kind of baby turkey poults they are. The mom was a Black Spanish (almost all black) and the dad is a Royal Palm (mosty white with a little black). Their babies have come out either all yellow (from the royal palm I think) and the others are all different shades of gray and very pretty. My DH says he can't fingure out where the gray came from, because Black Spanish babies are born black. I said, well......what happens when you mix white and black paint together? The kids yelled at the same time....gray! DH laughed and said, this isn't paint you know! I said maybe not, but you explain how it happened? He went mute with a big smile on his face! LOL
I can't wait to see if the yellow ones are one sex and the gray ones are another.

Christy (i just remember I have pics of the mom and dad so I will post those)

yes, i bet you have sex-linked poults!

and at least you did not crack a ROTTEN egg....

now, with the crooked neck, get on it right away, and you can straighten it out. Riley and Emu aer living proof...

you need Vit. E capsules, with the oil in it, and with selenimum added. squeeze some out and feed him a few drops severeal times a day with a syringe.

as an extra aid in pain relief, i rubbed Emu down with things like Cod Liver Oil. his whole spine. so he never looked fluffed like the rest, and he smelled bad, but he is fine now!

good luck!

Here's the mama hen...........I snapped this one when she came off her nest really fast for a drink and a bite. We just called her Mama turkey.

see my post?

tf..... I think I have the vit E caps, but I'm not sure they have Selinium in them.I'm going to go look. I think I have some Selinium in pill form....is there any way I could dissolve those and give it to him? I know I don't have Cod Liver oil, is there anything else I could use.....is that for pain only?

Christy

how about something else natural, like emu oil. just be sure it doesn't have things added to it... even the vit e oil rubbed down his spine should help... catscan knows the dosage of how much selenium to mix in. it won't take much...

Thanks tf......I found them. I'll have to dmail Catscan right quick and hope she is on soon! I will use the vit E for now. I don't have any emu oil either. I might have a form of it in one of those little tubs....is it really stiff yellow stuff? I have no idea if I can find it though. Is the purpose of putting on the neck just for pain......or does it do something like warm up when they are under heat and do something for them that way?


Edited to say stiff and not still.

This message was edited Jul 6, 2008 4:30 PM

I gave him a couple of drops of Vit. E oil and then dipped his beak in warm water to wash it down. He was a hard little bugger to work with, a bit bigger than a chick and full of energy so he was fighting a bit. It was hard to not lose a grip on him and then just be holding on to his neck, so I had to put his bottom on my belly, use my thumbnail to get his beak open and then drop in the Vit. E. It is working well though and FAST! I can't believe how fast. For the 1st time he is on his feet. At 1st he was on his feet leaning on the side of the incubator, but now he is up by himself. I just got a giggle when I lifted up the lid just a crack and peeped in, he was standing there peeling right out at me. He is still tumbling a bit every now and again, but is getting back on his feet. Before the Vit E he was flat on his back and side.

Catscan got back to me and posted as well on the Cacklin Chick thread with what to do with the Selenium and I got 1/4 of the pill crushed and dissolved in some warm water and let him drink that. She said that she mixed it all in a shot glass about 1/4 of the shot glass...one Vit E cap with Selenium in it, and chicken starter mash and fed hers that over the course of a day, but that her baby didn't eat all of it. I will do that tomorrow, as he will have to eat by then!

Thank you both, tf and Catscan.......I think he's going to make it now after all!

Christy

Here's the dad....a Royal Palm. He is the big puffed up fella. We called him both Thomas the turkey and Mr. Big Shot. (his tail is a bit off.....a dog got a hold of him and he lost some feathers)

thank goodness!

i really don't know the benefits of the rub, Emu didn't say. it was just something extra i did just in case, so maybe it just made me feel better?

The last little turkey is all the way out of his shell and is still wet. He looks pretty worn out and is resting right now. I just gave the one with a twisted neck some more Vit. E and Selenium water. He is doing so well that when I put him back in the incubator he took off running and almost took a dive clean out of it before I got the lid back on. He gave me a scare and a laugh! Yep, he is going to get his own cage tomorrow!

Christy

Well, feeling better never hurts, huh? I didn't do that because I didn't have the right stuff. He was doing so much better after the Vit. E that I didn't think that he was as bad off as some of them are.

How cool would sex link poults be? If I'm right I'm going to be tickled.......DH thinks I'm a bit nuts with the idea. Do they ALWAYS need proof for it to be true?

I almost forgot.......Catscan saved the day again. Last night my DS pointed out that one of the little gray poults had one eyed totally 'glued' shut and I said.....'I know how to fix that!' I grabbed a paper towel and soaked it with warm water and let it run over the eye and removed the gunk. Its eye was still not opening, so I thought it might take a couple of times. DH came in, saw it and picked it up and said 'What in the world is wrong with this one?' His head was still all wet. Then my DH put a little pressure on the eye....I don't know why......and the little thing opened it right up. He is just fine now!

Oh, happy happy day!

Christy

well only 2 hatched out of three pretty good i think here are pics i think i am going to need a new box soon i keep on using the box the incubator came in i lay down newspaper and clean it every morning