Try try again

Yesterday I emailed Luanne with questions on troubleshooting my incubator hatch, and she sent me back two excellent links.  First was a paper from U of Cali Ag school all about incubator issues.  Looking through that, I saw multiple mistakes I made.  The second link is an article on BYC about troubleshooting incubator failures.  Between the two links (both now bookmarked here!) I realized it was not so much a question of why so many didn't hatch, but why I have two healthy chicks out of the attempt.

Before dinner, hubby suggested we go out on the (new) back porch to crack open the eggs and see if that would give more clues ... there was a nice cool breeze blowing and we were both curious.  Seven of the eggs made it almost to hatching, and at least six of them were Wyandottes.  Three or four were partially developed, while the rest were clear.  The little thermometer/hygrometer hubby bought with the incubator and egg turner records minimum and maximum for both temp and humidity, and it showed that at some point during the hatch we had a temperature spike up to 103*F, probably in those last couple days ... unless that is a record of one of the chicks sleeping on top of it.  Most of the clear eggs were from the red broilers, whom I have seen kick eggs around while scratching without a single care.  If I hatch another batch from them, I'll need to collect eggs as soon as I see them in there to keep the little "soccer hooligans" from scrambling them.

I have the tray and screen scrubbed and have loaded the incubator back up, this time with 26 eggs from Tiny and the Flashy Girls, and one egg from Feyd and Penny.  Here's hoping I do a little better this time around.

Wyandotte eggs in incubator