One of my quail coveys lives inside, in the top level of the hutch. They’re a bit opinionated and spoiled. The rooster, like his father, is extremely gentle, friendly and sweet. Two of the ladies have been laying eggs for quite some time, even with short daylight hours. To get a jump on hatching season, I decided to start saving their eggs.
The telltale bullseye appeared in both colors of eggs, so I counted on at least getting a 50% hatch rate. I don’t normally like the odds during the short, cold months.
Soon, twenty eggs went into the incubator. At the end of the fourteenth day, I took them off of the quail rails, and put them on the hatching tray.
Note: line your hatching tray with grippy shelf liner. The kind with holes in it. Also, line your brooder with the same type of shelf liner. This helps to prevent and completely fix splay, without further action.
At this time, there was none of the wiggling or chirping I expected. There was nothing. There continued to be nothing through the seventeenth day. My chicks would normally be hatching by then. Suspecting I had imagined the aforementioned bullseyes, I carefully took one of the eggs out to candle it. I figured if it was totally dark, there was a chick inside. I didn’t get that far. The egg had weight. There was a chick inside. And back inside the incubator, gently, the egg went.
Sixteen little beauties hatched between the eighteenth and nineteenth days. There was not a single peep or wiggle before that. There were no real problems, either. A seventeenth must not have been developed enough to hatch on its own or survive.
Sixteen perfect chicks, most hatching on my own birthday, from eggs I had finally convinced myself were not viable.
