[Chookster]

My eggs were supposed to hatch today - have 50 quail eggs under incy. There's been absolutely no scratching or squeaking/pipping at all and i thought they must all either be infertile or still born or something as I had a problem before.  So, i listened really carefully to quite a few and nothing.  Did this several times over the last day or two and i just didn't get any feeling about the eggs being live at all so after doing that again this morning i decided to crack a few.  the shells didn't sound right either. 

the first five were yolks but then to my horror when i cracked was the white membrane and i knew i couldn't put this one back in the incy now. i know this sounds horrible but it was only half formed. I mean it was fully formed by only half grown and the other half of the egg was the sack. Why is it not ready? I double checked the calendar as it looked like it had another week to go by the size of it but they're definately due today.  I'm glad i did check as i probably would have thrown them out at some point thinking it was a dud batch.

temp is 38 deg c and humidy 50-60%

i've put the lid back on the others

[SMD66]

I did a search on this forum under, 'incubating eggs' and saw a thread entitled
http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=36196.0
if link doesn't work it's, '1st time incubator story'.
after reading this I am wondeing if your humidity was too high and they drown in the shell during development? 
If 21 days are up then I doubt that leaving them will produce any more chicks. 
What a shame to wait all that time with no results.  Sorry. 

[poppies]

Hi quail eggs only take 17/18 days to hatch, so I dont think they will hatch now.

as smd66 has said your humidity was probably to high, a lot of people dont add any water at all to quail eggs and get good hatches

[too many girls]

wasn't it your incy that went on the blink? maybe it was faulty before packing up altogether? i have no experience of quail only chickens and ducks and like everyone else i get good hatches and bad, sometimes we never find out what went wrong.

[Chookster]

yes it was one of my incy's that went on the blink.  What happened was condensation got to the circuit board and it all chalked up.  I've cleaned it up and cut free the board so the air gets to it in future and that seems to work well.

Well, here's what happened...

I purchased 60 hatching eggs, on arrival 10 were crushed as they were put in a jiffy bag through the post!! i really expected them to be sent in a box but anyway.  I let the seller know that 10 were crushed and he offered to send  a few more for the price of postage £3.50.  I didn't bother to chase it up as i would then be paying more for a product from him.

on 'hatch day' i went through all the eggs listening to see if there was any life and some of them were scratching etc

woopie i thought! I hoped for a good 20 or more but all i got in the end were 4 chicks! Two days after hatch day i had checked again and no noise from inside so i opened them.  After about five or six eggs with nothing but yolk I felt done in more than one way. But then there was a live chick in one of them.  I actually killed the chick by opening the egg - it looked like it had a week to go.  I was annoyed with myself for messing up a life but glad i could now see what was going on inside the egg. Anyway, that's how i accidently killed 2 by (yes sorry!) helping them out of hte egg if they wee stuck.

anyway, i have contacted him letting him know how disappointed i was, not expecting miracles at all but youknow...