What is the purpose of an air cell inside the egg?
Every chicken egg has an air cell. Throughout incubation this air cell grows inside the egg so by the time the embryo is ready to hatch there is enough breathable air inside the egg for the chick to survive. First, chicks will pip internally where they use their beak to break through the membrane into this air cell. Once they have, they can breathe and get ready to start breaking through the shell. If the egg has not lost enough moisture the chick can drown inside the shell (one reason proper humidity is important). Also, if the air cell is not in the correct position it can make it hard for the chick to breathe also resulting in a failure to hatch.
What causes detached or deformed air cells?
Rough handling
Shipping
Genetics of parent stock
Diet of parent stock
When hatching eggs there a lot of variables we can control such as the stability of the incubator we choose to use, the humidity, the temperature, where our eggs are from etc. When getting eggs shipped we add a lot of variables to the equation that are not within our control making hatching shipped eggs a gamble every time. The temperatures the eggs are exposed to in transit, the handling, riding a conveyer belt are some examples. There are things breeders can do to help increase the odds such as packaging the eggs well, only shipping fresh eggs, labeling the package as fragile, making a note for the manual priority belt, request they’re picked up from post office and not delivered to the door etc. Increasing the odds is all that does and eggs can still not do well.
It can be discouraging to get a bad hatch but the best tip I can give is not to get discouraged, takes lots of pictures and videos to refer to and use every experience as a learning experience!
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29 июл 2022
