Let me preface this with the statement "I have always had at least a 80% hatch rate with healthy chicks". Not so this time. Looks like a horror show! Eggs are starting to hatch - day 20, tiny holes beginning in eggs - and the water in the incubator is bright red. Dripping out of the holes being formed in the hatching eggs is blood. I refuse to even peek in the window again. Gross. What happened? Is this normal and I just don't remember this happening before? Will I check tomorrow and find 20 dry and happy chicks stumbling through the wreckage?

Thanks, Diana

-- Diana in FL (dvance4@juno.com), March 23, 2002

Answers

I think it must have something to do with the weather. We just had a really lousy hatch out of our incubators last week. Only about 10% hatched! We normally get about 70-80%. So, while it wasn't as creepy (thank goodness!) as yours sounds, it was still lousy! I really wonder if the weather could have some effect on it - the barometric pressure going up and down like a roller coaster. Just don't know. Not to be thwarted, however, we've got the incubators filled up and going again! Better luck THIS time, I hope! :-) Hope your hatch turns out okay!

-- Cheryl in KS (cherylmccoy@rocketmail.com), March 23, 2002.

WOW - that does sound gross!! Never heard of that one before. What has the temperature on it been? That's where I'd check first.

-- Pat (mikulptrc@aol.com), March 23, 2002.

Well, I am kinda wondering if the temp. was too high and they hatched too early. If they hatched too early they wouldn't have had enough time to ingest(or whatever they do) their yoke. Sometimes when a chick has too much humidity it is too big and can't get out of there. The two problems combined might cause the membrane to hemmorhage(sp?) like that. I sure feel bad for you too. That is gross! I have had that happen with a couple of chicks. I always figured it was too humid(so big chick) and too hot(so hatched early). You might get some help and clean out the dead ones and give the others a chance. I don't envy anyone that job! YUCK! Poor things! Poor you! YUCK! I pay my middle son a quarter a dead thing....do you have a son or a neighbor kid that could be bribed?

-- Nan (davidl41@ipa.net), March 23, 2002.

Couldn't have been Stephen King...he's alive and well here in Bangor, Maine :-)!! Actually, the barometric pressure could have been a factor.

-- Marcia (HrMr@webtv.net), March 23, 2002.

I've noticed that even the broody hens sometimes fail with hatching if the weather is extremely humid much of the time. They usually have better luck than me, though.

-- mary (mlg@mlg.com), March 23, 2002.