Rotten hatch, Rotten eggs!
Hatch day came. …Aaand it went. Not a single fluffy chick made an appearance. We decided to ‘eggtopsy’ the eggs at day 19 as they obviously were not developing. Button Quail/Chinese blue breasted quail eggs typically hatch in 16 to 18 days, and eggs taking anything from 19-22 days to hatch indicate incubator problems. Eggs that do not hatch at all may have several reasons behind that, from disease or bacteria contamination to breeding pairs with low fertility. Many people wait to day 24 to crack open the eggs to see what went wrong as some have done so earlier and had the misfortune of running into gushing blood and peeping from a still-alive chick! The membrane beneath the shell is full of blood vessels (these start to recede when the chick is ready to hatch), and can cause a chick to bleed to death if you knick them. If the yolk sac has not yet been absorbed by the chick, that is another thing that can be punctured and cause death. Point is: Make sure your eggs are truly not developing before breaking into them. Usually this is done by candling, but there are other methods one can use as well.
We didn’t want to candle or weigh eggs this time around for two reasons. One is that this is just a hobby hatch, and candling takes a lot more time and stress than such a hatch really dictates. The other is that button eggs are very small and lose heat very rapidly, so sometimes it is best to mess with them as little as possible. The problem with not candling or using other methods to determine development, means that you can do what we did and needlessly run an incubator for over two weeks. We at first worried that our previously mentioned dog-caused heat spike was the culprit. As it turns out, our eggs never had a chance to get far enough to be affected by that temperature spike, and were doomed from the get go.
When we cracked open our eggs, this is what we found:
EGG ONE:
This is our beloved crack baby! The cracked egg we tried to seal with candle wax. Obviously missed some of the hairline cracks, and this egg lost weight much more rapidly than the others. The yolk was actually solid with no visible egg white, and most of the shell was empty. There was no odor. There was no blood ring, which means this egg never started to develop. It does not mean the egg was not fertilized. The eggs were in such poor condition that none were able to be photographed to show what a fertilized egg looks like compared to an infertile egg. But, this photo will walk you through it: http://www.ca.uky.edu/smallflocks/_images/Fertile_vs_Infertile_egg.png Basically, an infertile egg will have a tight, white dot on the yolk, a fertile egg will have a spread out, filmy white circle.
EGG TWO:
Though I didn’t see any cracks, this one also lost weight very rapidly. Same thing. No odor, no blood ring, cooked, solid yolk. This one did have some solidified whites though
EGG THREE:
This one was heavier and juicy. There still was no development or blood ring though. The whites and yolk appear to be mixed up, like what you get when you shake an egg. There was no odor:
EGG FOUR:
The yolk was solidified, but it was a bit heavier than the first two eggs, and it had a blood ring which indicated that some development had occured. It also had a slightly bad odor to it.
EGG FIVE:
This one had the most development of all the eggs. The embryo had reached few days of development. The yolk sac had some light veining, and you can see the eye (the darkest spot). The whole blob was dark and stank as soon as I poked a hole in the egg.
EGG SIX:
This one was similar to EGG THREE. No odor, no blood ring, whites and yolk ran together and had been shaken up.
EGG SEVEN:
Bad odor, small embryo.
EGG EIGHT:
Small embryo, but no odor.
EGG NINE:
Small embryo, no odor.
EGG TEN:
Partially solidified yolk. No odor, no development.
EGG ELEVEN:
The yolk and whites were very shaken up and mixed in together. No odor, no development. Some of the eggs had the air cell at the side. The air cell should be located at the blunt/wide end of the egg. The air cell on this egg was located at the completely wrong pointy end. The eggs had been boxed and stored pointy side down, and the entire incubator was tilted so that the blunt end was always slightly higher. The air cells still managed to be affixed at incorrect locations.
EGG TWELVE:
No odor/development. Partially solidified yolk.
EGG THIRTEEN:
No odor/development. Glob of yolk fell out of this shell in a clump. Yolk mixed in with remaining white.
EGG FOURTEEN:
No odor/development. Yolk not intact.
EGG FIFTEEN:
Yolk actually seemed to be intact on this one, but no odor/development. This was the only egg in good enough condition that a faint blastoderm could be seen on, indicating that it was fertile. This one was the cutest little egg. Though it looks brown in the photo, it was bright green, and was one of the eggs the seller had marked as being from a pied breeding pair…the coloring we had most wanted!
We consulted with members of a poultry forum to see if our suspicions that the eggs did not hatch due to poor shipping were correct. The feedback we received was that yes, it looked like the eggs got cracked and shaken up, and also overheated to the point that some started getting cooked, and some began development. One person said that it looked like “the PO played soccer with your package”, which unfortunately seems to be the case! While we are glad they are finding ways to kick back on the job, we’d prefer an actual soccer ball be used. We at least had the piece of mind that there were no fertility or husbandry issues with the seller’s quail stock, as they are a well known and trusted seller. If we did not have this piece of mind, we may have also had to worry about issues such as the seller not storing eggs properly, and sending old eggs. Since we can narrow it down to shipping, we will attempt to fix the problems we had by offering to pay a bit extra to ship through a private company such as FedEx. It will be 1 to 2 months before we can try again, and hopefully it will be a much smoother ride for all!
countingchick'ns 
