I got my first Seramas in October. They started laying in November. I was so thrilled. I didn't know anything about broody hens or hatching eggs in an incubator, but I had purchased a Styrofoam incubator in advance with a automatic turner and a circulated air fan. There were some directions with the incubator, and some in other books I had bought. But to cut a long story short, of those I tried to hatch, only five chicks survived for a few days, and then they all died. I felt so low. A real gloom settled over me.
Then I heard about a book called "The New Incubation Book" by Brown and Robbins. Described as the hatchers bible. Apparently it was out of print, I tried to find one, and eventually got one from a used book store. It is a wonderful book with lots of pictures. many of candled eggs showing chick development. And tons of information about breeding chickens, etc.
So what did I do wrong? The hens laid every other day most of the time, some times they laid eggs every day and sometimes three or four days went by before they laid an egg. At first I picked up the eggs and put them in my pocket to carry back inside the house, but after breaking one I carried a small ceramic cup to put the eggs in where they rattled around until, back in the house, I put the eggs in an egg carton to hold until I got enough eggs, about four, to put in the incubator at once.
What did I do wrong just gathering eggs? Eggs are porous. They are vulnerable to bacterial infection when the shells come in contact with any object. How can that be , you say, when the hen is sitting on them in a chicken pen which is definitely not the most aseptic place to be. Well, good old mother nature has supplied the hen's feathers with an antibiotic which protects the egg, all the while she is setting on it! I should have, and now I do, wash my hands before handling any egg, any time. Before I did this I had to throw away a lot of eggs that when candled, showed a definite bacterial infection.
What else did I do wrong? Jiggling and jarring the eggs as I transported them from the shop to my house. Serama eggs I think, are really sensitive to being shaken and knocked about even mildly. Now I take an egg carton with kleenex liners in each indentation so the eggs are held stable while they are being moved.
Storing Eggs. The longer an egg is stored, the less its chance of hatching. The optimal storing temperature is 55F. The optimal humidity 70%. Luckily, in the winter, my back bathroom has just these conditions if I block the heat duct, and I did. An egg in storage must be turned every day, so I turned them pointy side up - pointy side down until more reading told me that was wrong - you turn them on their side. So I would turn them half way clockwise every day until I read that that was wrong, you turn them half way clockwise then turn them halfway counter clockwise - the reason is that there are two suspensory ligaments, one on either end of the egg - the pointy end and the wide end that keep the yolk from floating to the top of the egg and sticking to the shell. These two coiled ligaments are coiled in opposite directions. turning the egg in the same direction every day will wind up one side and unwind the other which will disrupt the structure and cause the death of the embryo. So I learned how to store and turn eggs correctly. I would store eggs until I got four and then put them in the incubator.
So you see, there is plenty of things that you can do that effect the hatchability of the egg. Everything you do right just increases the chance that you will get a good hatch rate.
