Pheasant hatch fail

[manxman]

Tried my hand at hatching a few birds this year in an incubator. First batch of 30 went well with 26 hatching. Was waiting on a further batch of 12 over the weekend. 3 hatched on day 23 and that was it. Had a look in a couple and found them pretty much fully formed but with a fair bit of yoke sack still attached. I'm thinking they died in the shell maybe 5 to 7 days before. The humidity & temp were actually better than the first batch and I turned them religiously 3 times a day. All looked good to go at day 7 when candled.

Any pointers as to why so many should fail so late on?

[Paul223]

Incubating is not my forte, however I am testing a large western incubator out at the mo and looked for advice online to find lots of 'old wives tails' giving contradicting reasons for this and that, then I came across an article, which would seem to be backed up by a bit of science

 

http://msucares.com/poultry/reproductions/hatchmgt.htm

Edited June 23, 2014 by Paul223

[r1steele]

Hard to tell without actually seeing your set up etc but it seems from your description to be either a humidity problem or more than likely the eggs weren't getting enough oxygen. You say that you managed to get the humidity and temp better for the second hatch so how did you manage this? Usually this can be achieved by closing up more vents to get a warmer damper environment but it can also be at the cost of oxygen starvation. To be honest, you probably would have been better keeping your humidity and temp settings the same for the second egg setting as you did for the first as you had a good hatch rate and then altered something that was working perfectly fine. At least you had the best hatch when you had your higher amount of eggs set so you didn't lose out too much.

[manxman]

Very helpful replies folks. Checked the incubator before I packed it away & noticed 2 more of the vents closed than the first hatch. Must have left them shut to keep the humidity up but reduced the airflow as a result. As the link article describes, they probably died around day 20 as a consequence.

Won't make that mistake next year. Many thanks.

[Paul223]

Out of interest do you know what humidity worked first time round?

[rich1985]

Sounds like oxygen problem to me, temp and oxygen are the 2 most important things. Humidity is still an important factor but not as much so as temp and oxygen, you would be astonished how much gasses are exchanged through an egg during the incubation process.

[manxman]

Out of interest do you know what humidity worked first time round?

First batch averaged 40% and upped to 55% for the last few days.