There are hatches where I set the eggs, candle them, move them to lockdown, and a few weeks later I have an incubator full of noisy little chicks.

And then there are my Ölandsk Dwarfs.

These tiny chickens lay tiny little eggs that routinely give me entirely too much hope. I candle them and see beautiful development. Veins, movement, growing embryos, all the things I want to see. Fertility in my flock is generally excellent, and for most of incubation, everything looks like it is going exactly the way it should.

Then we get to the end.

Some hatch. Too many don’t.

I don’t lose every Ölandsk Dwarf chick. That’s important, because I don’t want to make this sound like I can’t hatch them at all. I can. But I consistently lose more than I hatch, often after the embryos have developed far enough that I’m already mentally counting those chicks.

That’s the part that gets me.

Because when an egg is infertile, at least I know where the story ended. When I candle an egg and see an embryo that quit early, it sucks, but again, I have an answer.

A fully developed chick that makes it almost all the way and never gets out of the shell?

That one will drive you absolutely nuts.

And after trying to figure this out for a while now, I still don’t have a neat little answer for you.

Fertility and Hatchability Are Not the Same Thing

This was one of the first distinctions I had to really wrap my head around.

Fertility tells me whether the egg was fertilized and began developing. Hatchability tells me whether that developing embryo successfully makes it all the way through incubation and becomes a chick outside the shell.

Those are two very different finish lines.

My Ölandsk Dwarf eggs can look fantastic during candling. I can have excellent fertility, strong veins, movement, and embryos progressing exactly like I expect them to. If I stopped evaluating the hatch there, I’d think we were knocking it out of the park.

Unfortunately, chickens have to actually exit the egg.

That last part has been my problem.

I’ve had hatches where eggs continue developing right up toward lockdown and then I get no external pip. No zip. No chick. Sometimes I’ll open unhatched eggs afterward and find chicks that developed remarkably far but never completed the hatch.

That tells me something happened.

It does not tell me what.

And that distinction matters, because there are a whole lot of things that can affect whether a developed embryo successfully hatches.

My Best Guess? I’m Missing Something in Incubation

At this point, I suspect there may be something about my artificial incubation process that these particular eggs are less forgiving of.

Notice I said suspect.

I haven’t proven it.

I’ve played with humidity. I’ve tried running them drier. I’ve questioned lockdown humidity. I’ve questioned temperature. I’ve checked equipment and watched conditions. I’ve tried leaving the incubator alone as much as possible instead of hovering over it like an anxious chicken midwife.

At this point, I’ve considered threatening the incubator, but I’m pretty sure it knows I need it more than it needs me.

So far, that last one has not produced statistically significant results. 😂

The frustrating part is that I hatch other breeds successfully. Swedish Flower Hens hatch well for me. Icelandics hatch well for me. Hedemoras generally don't make me question every decision I've ever made while staring through an incubator window.

The Ölandsk Dwarfs do.

That makes it incredibly tempting to say, “Well, these birds are just difficult to hatch.”

Except I don't actually know that.

And then Agnes came along and blew a giant hole in that theory.

And Then Agnes Made Me Question Everything

Agnes is an Ölandsk Dwarf hen, and unlike the stereotypical broody-hen story, she did not disappear into some secret corner of the farm and surprise me three weeks later. She was sitting right there in the nest box. I knew she was broody, I knew she was sitting on eggs, and I intentionally left her alone to hatch them.

Apparently, the part I was less clear on was exactly how long she'd been sitting. 😂

I had every intention of being responsible about the whole thing. As hatch day got closer, I planned to set up a little broody pen for her inside her breeding pen so she could finish hatching and raise her chicks safely without the rest of the flock interfering.

There was just one small problem.

I counted the weeks wrong.

By the time I went out to get everything ready for Agnes and her soon-to-arrive babies, they weren't soon-to-arrive anymore. The chicks had just hatched.

All 11 of them.

Eleven eggs. Eleven chicks. One hundred percent hatch rate.

Meanwhile, I'm standing there thinking about my incubators, thermometers, hygrometers, humidity adjustments, candling schedules, lockdown procedures, notes, and all the other things I've tried while attempting to figure out why I lose more artificially incubated Ölandsk Dwarf chicks than I hatch.

Agnes sat in a nest box and went 11 for 11.

Thanks, Agnes. 😂

Her hatch doesn't prove that my incubator is the problem. One hen with one clutch can't tell me that, and there are plenty of variables between her clutch and the eggs I've artificially incubated. But it gave me one hell of a reason to question my assumption that poor hatchability might simply be something I was dealing with in the birds themselves.

At the very least, Agnes showed me that one clutch from my flock was perfectly capable of making it all the way from fertile egg to hatched chick under natural incubation.

And that put my incubator squarely back on the suspect list.

What Agnes’s Hatch Does and Doesn’t Tell Me

It would be really easy to look at Agnes and declare the mystery solved: incubator bad, hen good. Except that isn’t how this works.

Agnes gave me one clutch of 11 eggs. That’s useful information, especially because every one of those eggs hatched, but it’s still one clutch under one set of circumstances. Her eggs may not have had exactly the same parentage as every incubator hatch. They weren’t stored and handled the same way. She controlled temperature, humidity, turning, ventilation, and everything else in whatever mysterious chicken way hens have been successfully doing this since long before somebody invented a digital hygrometer.

So no, Agnes did not scientifically prove that my incubator is the problem, but she gave me one hell of a reason to investigate it. Her hatch tells me that at least one clutch from this flock was capable of exceptional hatchability under natural incubation.

Combined with the strong fertility and development I routinely see in artificially incubated eggs, that’s enough to make me question what may be happening differently in my incubator.

Right now, that’s where I am. I have a working hypothesis, but I do not have an answer. And if I eventually figure it out, believe me, there will be an article because apparently Agnes isn’t interested in sharing her incubation settings.

So What Could Be Going Wrong?

This is the part where I refuse to pull an explanation out of my ass just because I'd really like one.

Late embryo loss can have more than one possible cause. Incubation temperature and humidity matter. Moisture loss from the egg matters. Ventilation matters. Egg handling and storage before incubation can matter. Breeder nutrition and health can matter. Shell characteristics, embryo positioning, and genetics can matter too.

Knowing that gives me places to investigate, but it doesn't give me permission to pick whichever explanation sounds best and call it solved.

That's why I'm keeping records.

I'm paying attention to which breeding groups the eggs came from, how fertility looks, when development appears to stop, what incubation conditions were used, and whether changes actually improve hatch results over multiple sets rather than one lucky hatch.

Because changing three things, getting two extra chicks, and declaring victory doesn't teach me much.

It just gives me two chicks and absolutely no idea what worked.

Poor Hatchability Is Not a Preservation Trait

This is something I want to correct from the way I used to think about these hatches. It would be easy to romanticize the struggle. These are rare chickens. Preservation is hard. Therefore, terrible hatch rates are simply part of preserving rare landraces.

No.

If I am consistently losing developed chicks, that’s not some charming piece of Ölandsk Dwarf history I need to protect. It’s a problem I need to understand.

Preservation doesn’t mean blindly reproducing whatever is in front of me because the population is rare. Fertility, hatchability, health, appropriate body type, production, parental ability, and functional flock behavior all matter when we’re deciding what moves forward.

If poor hatchability eventually points toward something happening in my breeding flock rather than my incubation process, I need to know that too. Ignoring a problem because I don’t like the possible answer isn’t preservation. That’s just avoiding the problem.

And Agnes is one of the reasons I’m not ready to blame the birds.

Sometimes I Set 14 Eggs and Get Three Chicks

This is where the science and the emotional side of preservation collide. I’ve set a beautiful group of eggs, watched nearly all of them develop, and ended up with three chicks. I’ve had hatches where I got none. I’ve had the relief of finally getting a chick out only to lose it shortly afterward.

That shit hurts.

It’s easy to say, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” until you’ve watched a living embryo moving inside an egg for weeks. At some point, hope sneaks in whether you invited it or not. Then hatch day comes and the incubator is too quiet.

I second-guess everything. Was humidity wrong? Did I miss a temperature problem? Did I store the eggs too long? Was there something about that particular pairing? Did I screw something up at lockdown? Should I have changed something? Should I have left everything the hell alone?

After a particularly bad hatch, I absolutely have moments when I think, “I’m not doing this again.”

Then somebody lays another tiny white egg, and you can probably guess what happens next.

Why I Keep Setting the Eggs

I don’t keep trying because every chick that hatches magically increases genetic diversity. That’s not how genetic diversity works. More chicks from the same narrow genetics are still more chicks from the same narrow genetics.

I keep trying because I need enough healthy offspring to make thoughtful breeding decisions and continue this population responsibly. I need to see what different pairings produce. I need enough birds to evaluate body type, health, fertility, production, behavior, and the other traits we’re trying to maintain without narrowing the flock around whichever two chicks happened to survive.

And I keep trying because quitting gives me exactly one guaranteed outcome: no next generation. That’s not an outcome I’m willing to accept just because this particular puzzle has been frustrating.

Agnes Also Reminded Me Why Hens Still Matter

There is something incredibly humbling about spending all this time trying to reproduce what a broody hen does with her belly.

Agnes didn’t have an alarm telling her when to turn the eggs. She didn’t have a digital humidity display. She didn’t candle on Day 7 and update a spreadsheet. She sat, got up when she needed to, turned her eggs, managed the nest, and eventually hatched 11 chicks like she’d just completed the easiest task in the world.

I’m not throwing away my incubators and outsourcing the entire breeding program to Agnes. Natural incubation brings its own complications, and I need controlled hatches for the way we manage our breeding program.

But I’m paying attention, because when the chickens give me information that doesn’t fit my theory, my job isn’t to explain it away. My job is to change the theory

Preservation Means Being Willing to Not Know Yet

I think that’s the biggest lesson these tiny eggs have taught me.

There is a tremendous temptation when you’re educating other people to have an answer for everything. Nobody wants to write an article that ends with, “Hell if I know.” But sometimes that’s the accurate answer.

I know fertility in my Ölandsk Dwarf flock can be excellent. I know I routinely see embryos develop well into incubation. I know I lose more artificially incubated chicks than I successfully hatch. I know I’ve tried adjusting incubation conditions without finding a consistent solution yet. And I know Agnes hatched 11 out of 11 under a hen.

Those are my observations. Everything beyond that is still investigation.

Maybe eventually I’ll find one stupid little incubation variable I’ve been missing this entire time. Maybe the answer will be more complicated. Maybe I’ll discover several factors interacting with one another.

I don’t know yet, and I’m okay saying that. What I do know is that those failed hatches aren’t a reason to stop asking questions. They’re the reason to keep asking better ones.

The Next Tiny White Egg

So yes, I’ll set them again. I’ll record what I did, watch development, compare hatches, and change one thing when there’s a reason to change it instead of turning every incubation dial at once and hoping something works.

I’ll probably stare through the incubator window. I’ll definitely swear. And somewhere in the chicken yard, Agnes will presumably be judging me.

But I’m going to keep trying because these little birds are worth understanding, and preservation isn’t about pretending every generation goes perfectly. It’s about paying enough attention to figure out what the birds in front of you are telling you, even when the answer is inconvenient.

Or when the answer might be: maybe Agnes is better at this than I am.

Fine.

For now. 😂

 

🐔

Tiny eggs grow still
Agnes walks out with eleven
I reset the hatch