We've been incubating guinea and chicken eggs for the past 3 weeks.
Finally, the wait is almost over!
On Monday, tomorrow, our chicken eggs are supposed to hatch!
And the guineas should hatch the week after.
However, we candled all the guinea and chicken eggs last night, and determined that most, if not all, of the eggs are just egg yolk.
So sad. Something must be wrong with out incubator.
And so, this morning we had an egg burial. We cracked open the eggs in a small dugout out in the woods. As we expected, they were just yolk. No babies even started to form. They were buried.
The last batch of bad incubated eggs I buried less than a month ago was dug up by a wild animal, probably a fox or coon, but who knows.
This property is abundant with wildlife, that's for sure. I do have some disturbing news about wild animals around here, but that'll have to wait till tommorrow's post, I don't want to overwhelm you, since I don't post much these days! Life does go on, and my posting doesn't always keep up.
This property is abundant with wildlife, that's for sure. I do have some disturbing news about wild animals around here, but that'll have to wait till tommorrow's post, I don't want to overwhelm you, since I don't post much these days! Life does go on, and my posting doesn't always keep up.
We did save about 7 chicken eggs and 4 guinea eggs that looked different during the candling process; they are still in the incubator. We figured we'd give them a few more days, but, honestly, from the candling results, I don't think they are fully formed chicks. I'm getting good at candling and knowing when it's nothing.
We haven't had a broody chicken hen in quite a while. No hen wants to sit on eggs, or we would have put some of the incubating eggs under her. I guess that'll be the last time we try to use the incubator. It just doesn't work for us. If one of the hens should go broody this summer we'll let her raise babies. Until then, no chicks for us!
5 comments:
I'm sorry, little chicks are so nice to watch. Maybe you could fence in one of your guineas while she is out sitting her nest?
Sorry to hear about your incubating woes. We're having the same problem here also! The first batch of 47 were mostly duds on the get go, and it's day 23 but I still have six in there that I candled "good", just hoping that something will happen, but I doubt it.
I put another 48 in the incubator last week....I'm almost afraid to candle them.
Wonder what's up with the eggs lately; doesn't seem that ANYbody is having good success.
Really sorry to hear this. :o(
*hugs* ♥
Hope you get a broody hen soon so you can have some chicks!
It isn't you, I ordered chicks in December for May 7th, the company I ordered from had 94 orders that did not hatch. I thought it might be the breed I ordered but the lady said it was across the board they were having the same problem of no eggs hatching. She said some years are like that when eggs just don't hatch. They checked the incubators too and there was no problem with them. She said sometimes things like that happen.
It is interesting raising animals isn't it?
I am looking forward to your next post. So sorry about your eggs. I know it is heart breaking.
Maybe it's the temperature? I've had that happen to me twice where eggs did not progress - and the problem was in the thermometer, I bought another one and yes, the temp was too high for them.
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