Chick had a heartbeat!

Hello first time raising chickens. I have a hen who mated with my rooster for the first time and layed  3 fertile eggs. I put them in an incubator day 11.i know this is a big mistake, I thought she would go broody and I had trouble getting an incubator where I am. Its day 18  today and I candled and there was almost 0 development, only slight veins and a dark spot. I decided to crack them open to learn about what went wrong. Well one of them only had eyes and a tiny heart that was beating. 1 was complete dud and the other wasnt fertile at all. Did that one with a heart beat stand a chance? Did I make a terrible mistake? Oof. First time doing any of this and I've been learning on the fly.

I know it probably feels like a terrible mistake, but you didn't know. It's a learning curve for everybody, and that means we all learn the hard way. I have to say that my errors and mistakes have been valuable for what they've taught me. Sure, there are quite a few things I wish I'd done differently, but I've learned more from getting things wrong than right, and I've taken the lessons to heart. Hang in there!

Thank you Leigh! Do you think there was a chance it would survive with so little development at day 18?

Pompeo Contarin wrote:Do you think there was a chance it would survive with so little development at day 18?

Pompeo, I have no idea, but if it was me, I would give it a try. We once had an accident with some duck eggs that were cracked open several days early. Mom Duck abandoned them, but I was able to graft the ducklings onto a broody hen, who was thrilled to raise them.

My husband and I follow a general policy of doing the very best we can to give everything a chance to live. If it doesn't work out, we accept the outcome as the natural way of things and then press on with the next task at hand.

Is the chick still alive? I think we'd all be interested in how this works out!

Do you mean 18 days after laying or 18 days in the incubator, eggs only start to develop when they are incubated. so if that was 18 days after lay then they were only 7 days into development. Even if the hen is going to go broody she won't start incubating until she has laid what she considers to be enough eggs, You can save up eggs so you have enough for a decent batch 3 or 4 week old eggs will develop just fine.

Hi Pompeo,
I think Skandi has the right question. If I read your post correctly, it was 11 days after being laid that you put it in the incubator? If that was the case, then it only had 7 days of growth, essentially only 1/3 of the way to being a full grown chick. Chicks need 21(ish) days of being incubated in order to grow. Before incubation does not count in the counting. Don't let this stop you from trying again. It might have made it, but it might not have too. I let some broody hens hatch out some eggs and I lost more than hatched out, but I learned a lot too.

In the words of Joel Salatin "If its worth doing, its worth doing poorly first". In other words, don't get discouraged if things don't go perfectly the first time. If a toddler stopped trying to walk the first time he/she fell down, they would never get anywhere. But by trying again and again, a whole new world opens up.

In my research I didn't realize that the days only start ticking once you start incubating. Thanks so much for clarifying that for me. So many articles I read online said you should only store eggs for 7 days and a maximum of 10 days before putting in the incubator, so I was worried about getting them in there. This makes so much more sense now and is a big relief how you say. So yes they essentially had just under a week of incubation development. The hen stopped laying for a while after those 3 eggs probably due to the heat wave and being moved into a new coop, so I was worried about waiting for a whole clutch of eggs. Now I know better!