chicks hatch with strange sac thing

[walldanzig]

brilliant let me know how you get on =0)

[RichmondHens]

That's a not bad hatch rate, 7 out of 12. So far I've got 5 out of 18!!!!!

It's apparently been a bad year for hatching generally - I was having a conversation with a local breeder the other day.

I'd also be interested to know people's male/female ratios - mine are very predominantly male - out of 16 so far only 4 females, 5 yet unsexed and another 10 incubating.

[Hilary B]

It's apparently been a bad year for hatching generally - I was having a conversation with a local breeder the other day.

I'd also be interested to know people's male/female ratios - mine are very predominantly male - out of 16 so far only 4 females, 5 yet unsexed and another 10 incubating.

Nature has (IMO) some subtle ways of achieving a gender balance. The situation in which I have evidence is with goats. When I first kept goats, I took the nanny goats to a local billy at the appropriate time, and I got a LOT more male kids than female. Later, I kept a billy of my own, housed separately from the nannies, but close by. From then onwards there were a lot more female kids born.
I can't guess at the mechanism, but I believe that the permanent presence of a billy in some way triggered a response that led to less male kids, or, to put it another way, when the billy was NOT always around, something triggered the birth of more male kids.
In some egg-laying creatures 'gender balance' is affected by incubation environment (often by one gender being more vulnerable to loss in marginally wrong conditions). Maybe the weather is having some such effect, even in the theoretically controlled environment of the incubator? That would fit with also having low hatch rates......

[walldanzig]

the little black one lost his battle but his 5 brothers and sisters are fine

[walldanzig]

[IMG][/IMG]

two of the bigger ones on their way to the nursery(heat lamp)

[CoraxAurata]

Thats such bad luck, after trying so hard too! One was bad enough but to lose the wee girlie too.

[CoraxAurata]

yolk shouldn't be attached by cord it should be the net of blood vessels (+ some membrane) that lines the inside of the egg during development - can mean chick is early..

Ok so I have to say I was wrong it could well have been the yolk sac (though when only attched by a cord still couldn't be dragged around by baby) but am amazed they hatched themselves at that stage of (under)development, I just had a somewhat distressing incident with a cracked (not pipped) egg had a prem chick with the sac behind on cord as you described, considerably larger and brighter coloured than my previous experinces (those I have had success with) he didn't make it.

Am still sure that was the correct course of action though.

[walldanzig]

any advice is always appreciated I dont think there was much I could have done a couple of the others what hatched seem a bit small and underdeveloped