incubating puzzle

i turned off the incubator last night and took the eggs out today and smashed them one by one to determine fertility rate. it turns out, there were 19 more eggs with almost fully developed chicks. that means, out of 42, we had 38 fertile eggs.

i'm puzzled. why did they stop? did i stop turning them too soon? the literature said stop 3 days before hatch and i did. then i had eggs start hatching w/in 24 hours of stopping. perhaps i should have kept turning them for another 2 days and stop it 1 day before hatch? it really is sad that we lost out on 1/2 of our chicks because of possibly the last 48 hours.

if anyone can help me out with this or point me in the right direction i'd really appreciate it. while i'm happy we got 19 this year, i'm sad that it could have been double and they were snuffed out so close to the end of the cycle. (there were 2 chicks that were very tiny and died a few weeks back it seems but the rest were full size).

anticipation

better than tv!

here she comes!

freshly hatched!

you're crackin' up man!

come here often?

it's my chicks in a box!

current count is 16 hatched, 14 living (the heat lamp got pushed over too far on their box and by the time i realized it, 3 had wilted. i was able to revive 1 but the other two were already gone. today is day 21, they started hatching on day 18 in the evening. this is our best hatch to date by either incubator or chicken (we started with 42 eggs).

ETA: looks like we're at 18 eggs hatching...a bit less than a 50% hatch rate, great for us! but very low compared to the average. better luck this fall!