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Articles |
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SHORT TERM ELECTRICAL INCUBATOR
PROBLEMS
BY : S.U. Khan Gold Medalist
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You insulate your coops. You feed your breeders an enriched diet. You fuss
around with lights in the middle of winter to stimulate the production of
fertile eggs with strong embryos. You carefully collect, mark and store the
eggs for incubation. You follow the incubator’s instructions. You fill the
incubator with the freshest eggs. You sit back and even though you know you
should not. You start counting your chicks before they are hatched. And then
it happens. You wake up in the middle of night or you come from work one day
only to discover that you have an incubator full of cold eggs “All that work
and now this” you say to yourself.
Incubator problems! Most of us who raise exhibition poultry have had
incubator problems at one time or another. So, what do you do at such time?
What are your options? In most cases, there is more than one viable option
open to you. In great many cases, a hatch can be saved inspire of short term
incubator problems. That is because chicks, not only after but also before
they are hatched, are tough.
The two most common incubator problems are probably power failure and
equipment malfunction. In either case, do not immediately open the
incubator. If you have a forced-air incubator, close the air vent. Whatever
heat remains inside the incubator must be retained as long as possible.
If it is an equipment malfunction, try to determine the specific nature of
the problem without cooling, the eggs any more than they already are. If you
have to remove the eggs from the incubator to make repair, put them directly
into foam egg cartons with no holes in the lids. That way, whatever heat
remains in the eggs, will be contained by the closed egg cartons. Make sure
that the pointed end of the eggs is facing down, with the air sac at the
top. Be careful not be rough in handling the eggs, Remember that they
hopefully contain living embryos.
It is better to keep the eggs, on a short term basis, at a temperature below
the optimum temperature for hatching eggs than at a temperature above the
optimum temperature. If the eggs are kept at 90o degrees, say, for a few
hours, at least the embryos would not die. If the eggs are kept for very
long at 110o degrees, on the other hand, the excessive hear will kill the
embryos. Be very careful not to overheat the eggs.
If you can determine the nature of the problem and if you can easily obtain
a replacement part, install it as quickly as you can and you therefore, will
come in working. May be your incubator’s wick, or wafer is the problem. May
be the microswitch or electrical cord is not working properly? As soon as
things are back to normal, it might not be a bad idea to have some spare
parts for your incubator (a new wafer, a new microswitch and so on).
If your electrical service has been interrupted, leave the eggs in the
closed incubator and cover the incubator with a blanket or some other
covering that will help keep the remaining heat in the incubator until the
power comes back on. If the eggs are well in the incubation cycle, the heat
given off by the developing embryos will provide a fair amount of protective
heat for the eggs.
If your incubator is located in a cool room, you might also consider moving
it into a warmer location. If your incubator is small, you might be able to
move it to a location nearby where the power is not off.
If none of those options seems workable to you, and you decide to remove the
eggs from the incubator because the power has been off for an extended
period of time, give it your best to maintain the eggs at the correct
incubation temperature.
The best solution, of course, is to put the eggs, as soon as possible, into
a functioning incubator or under setting hens. Perhaps a friend has room in
an incubator for your eggs or some setting hens that you can use? Perhaps
you can quickly buy a new incubator.
The purpose is not to recommend one emergency solution over another. What
you must do, by whatever means you choose, and without making yourself
crazy, has to maintain the eggs at more or less the correct temperature
until you can get them into a normal incubator situation.
If your power is off for only a few hours or if you can repair your
malfunctioning incubator within a few hours, chances are that your hatch
will not be seriously affected. If your incubator is off for a longer period
of time and no viable option seems available to you, you may have to declare
the hatch a loss.
At what point do you declare a hatch a loss? As a general rule, I do not
give up very easily. I think it is probably a good idea not to declare a
hatch a loss even if the eggs have been cooled down to room temperature for
an entire day until you have been able to get the eggs back into a normal
incubation situation for a day or two. At that point, candle the
appropriately warm eggs and determine if the embryos are alive or not. You
may be very pleasantly surprised to discover that the embryos are still
alive.
In talking with seasoned poultry breeders, I have learned that there are two
days, above all, in the 21 day incubation period for chickens eggs on which
the correct incubation temperature for the eggs must be carefully examined.
If some thing goes wrong on one of those two days, serious problems
(deformities, death) can arise. Those two days are day 3 and day 19.
Why those two days? On day 3, the nose, legs and wings to form. At this
point the heart of the developing embryo has already began to beat, and the
embryo can be seen, as very small red spot, through the shell especially
with white shelled eggs. On day 19, the remaining portion of the yolk that
has not been absorbed by the embryo during the third week of incubation is
absorbed into the chick’s abdomen. During the first two weeks of incubation,
the developing embryo is nourished by the white of the egg.
That does not mean, to be sure, that you can disregard the temperature on
the other days in the incubation cycle. Certainly not. Every effort must be
made to maintain the correct temperature and humidly in the incubator
throughout the entire incubation cycle. But it means those days 3 and 19, so
I have been told, are especially important days in the cycle.
Chicks hatched or unhatched, in other words, are tough. This past hatching
season. I had a setting hen who seemed to be off the nest more than she was
on it. I was not optimistic about her chances for a good hatch, but I
allowed her to do as she pleased. Most of the eggs hatched. Setting hens, of
course, are the world’s best incubators.
Most of us have probably heard hard to believe but true stories about eggs
that have hatched under difficult conditions; power off for 2 days and yet
70 % of the eggs still hatched, hen abandoned nest on day 20 and the eggs
hatched without her. Every such case is interesting and informative. The
variables are always different.
What works for me or for another breeder may not work for you. The purpose
of this article is not to tell you, specifically, what to do when an
incubator problem develops at your house. The purpose of this article is to
remind you that in most cases, you have, at such times, more than one
workable option open to you. More often than not, it seems, a hatch can be
saved in spite of short term incubator problems.
S.U. Khan Gold Medalist
sibghat129@yahoo.com
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