Did I cook them? Help!

I had to turn off incy' for just a second and cover the eggs to let the thermostat reset as 'incy is naughty that way. Set it back up, sat down in front of the computer and forgot it When I looked next, the temp read 113F! Help! It may have ran this temp for as long as 10-15 minutes! Did I kill them? I almost think the jap eggs may be ok, due to their size but cpq eggs are so tiny.

Phew that is quite a high temp (that's 45C). I think you might have got away with it if it was only 10-15 mins. Difficult to tell. Try candling the white eggs or those that don't have too many blotches.

Thanks Andy
Not much use candling, as they are all dark and quite splotchy. However the man who sold them to me has sent out an order at his expense to replace the ten broken I recieved. So all is not lost I'll still have my english whites, though I may have to order more cpq. The best news of all is that incy is back to behaving like an angel, I just had to move the fan. Ed

Oh Dear, poached eggs!


It's a shame you don't live a little closer...I have 7 little CPQs and they are popping eggs out like crazy....could have sent you some replacement ones for free.

I'm new to keeping quail too....have the CPQs and 8 female and 2 male Italians [also laying well] I've found the other members here to be very friendly and generous with their offers of help and information.

Hope they can be salvaged
Lisa-Dawn

I can hardly believe it! I apparently did NOT roast them, or at least not all of them. 1 cpq and counting!
1 English White jap and counting!

congratulations,fingers crossed for more.

I really didnt expect any to hatch out of this batch of ten, they were roasted so badly. On the upside, I have 20 more jap eggs in that did not get roasted, or any other calamity. They are due to hatch out on the 14th.

how many did you get from your roast?

It always surprises me how some chicks can survive quite adverse incubation conditions. Bet there all going to be male though!

OK, here's a daft question for you Andy: Does incubation temperature change the sex of the chick or just weed out which ones hatch? Is it low temperature for female and high temperature for male? Or are male chicks more hardy than the girls? OK that was more than one question

I think someone said that males tend to be more robust than females, so more males tend to survive and hatch. I'm not sure how true this is. It's hard to tell really without scientific trial.

Sex determination works at conception for birds (as with most upper order organisms), but I think some reptiles can hatch males or females dependent on the temperature. I can't remember where I heard this. Think it was one of Sir David Attenborough's documentaries.

crocadiles lay there eggs in a pit,then cover them up. the ones nearer the top are (cooler) one sex and the eggs at the bottom (hotter) are another.dont no which way round it is though.

that would be so cool if temp of jap eggs influenced sex, wouldn't have that 'what to do with the males' problem and would get my garden full of hens a lot quicker.

I read somewhere that the males develop quicker and so hatch a day earlier than females. But it would only work if you knew which order the eggs were laid in.

Maybe someday someone will do a study. The eggs that I got from ebay had the date they were laid on them. I didn't pay attention when they hatched what order, except for the first two. One was my range (the only one) and it's a male. The second to hatch was a golden and he was also male. I had one golden hatch on day two and he was also male. All the rest were white so I don't remember who was who when they hatched. My one hen is white so I don't know which day she hatched on.

have anymore hot babes hatched?