Quail hatching - the final stages

It's easy to get complacent, just pop the incubator on, buy some eggs and away you go.  I am usually good a planning my hatching and incubation periods, allowing for the postage time and the 24 hours of resting the eggs before setting.

Some how with my quail hatch I have managed to miss quite a significant issue.  Power cuts.
I would normally  be unlucky to have a power cut during our peak hatching season and the loss of power to an incubator for an hour or so would not be a total disaster and spell the end of the hatch.  If fact if the incubator is left alone and closed I'm sure the eggs will be unaffected.

Its not ideal but you have to work with what you have got. After all a hen naturally leaves her eggs daily for 30-45 minutes to eat drink and "clear out".

My issue is that we have building work on going and the power has been off for an hour the last couple of days.  School boy error but one I can not change.
 

The quail eggs are now into the last 3 days in the incubator.  Rather than risking further heat and humidity loss by candeling, I left well alone. I hope it helps and I will find out soon.

 

As with chicken eggs I have stopped turning and added more water to increase humidity ready for hatching.  The humidity should increase to around 70-75% now with the extra water and a slight reduction in temperature.

I hope to hatch a reasonable number of females.  I have massive demand from my three young boys, who will eat 6 quail eggs each as a snack.  They are lucky as with eggs priced at £2.85 locally for 12, we would not be buying them.

I will be sure to update once hatching is complete with photos of the new tiny chicks.

Thanks for reading.