Hi, I am sorry this problem seems to be high this season. Again I say this is mainly related to too much humidity in your incubator. It is great news that more people are incubating but there are three things you must get right :- Temp, Humidity and Hygiene. Control these three elements and with good fertile eggs you should get good results.

Ensure you use fresh eggs a good incubator (I recommend RCOM Incubators) and incubator disinfectant. Also remember too much humidity is much worse than too little.

40%-45% for the first 19 days 37.7c

60%-65% for the last 2 days 37.5c for hen eggs.

Clean eggs before setting in a good egg/incubator disinfectant. Ensure the water-disinfectant soultion is slightly warmer than the egg and give a gentle clean.

I have just written a comment on this one then also have had 2 emails with a similar question so i will add to the blog. - I have collected hatching eggs but they have got cold overnight to 2-3 degrees, are they any good? Well to be honest no, your fertile eggs are badly damaged. Saying that if you have space in the incubator put them in as there is a small chance they will hatch. Please ensure you candle the hatching eggs at day 7 or day 10 and remove the non developing fertile eggs and throw them away to avoid bacteria damaging the developing eggs.

I have had a question today as why when they put in 6 fertile eggs, after 23 days upon checking 1 was just a yolk and 5 were fully formed but did not hatch, what is the problem. I am afraid the problem is caused by too much humidity in the incubator, only 5 of the eggs were fertile eggs the other was a dud but of the 5 that did develop there was not enough loss inside the egg shell due to incubator humidity and with a chick developing to large it was unable to turn to break out of the shell. I would suggest a new batch of eggs and maybe 50% less water than the last incubation, ideally have the incubator have water in only every other day so 1 day in 2 it is dry. Then of course plenty of humidity for the last 2 days. I hope this helped you Peter