Incubating, and then hatching, a chicken egg can be a nerve-wracking experience, mishaps can happen at any stage of the egg incubating or egg hatching process. Unfortunately, you cannot do anything about some of these mishaps.
If your bird hatched shrink-wrapped then this article will help you learn more about what happened and why
Table of Contents
Shrink wrapped chick
We’d all like our chicks to hatch and be healthy, happy, and normal, but this unfortunately does not always happen. Sometimes your bird can come out shrink-wrapped.
What is shrink wrapping?
A “shrink-wrapped” chick describes a scenario where the membrane inside the egg, which is meant to be moist and separate from the chick, gets attached to the baby chick and dries on the bird.
A shrink wrapped bird will not be able to turn in the egg when it’s time to turn, and it will not be able to successfully hatch out of its egg on its own. This can be very dangerous, a shrink-wrapped baby bird can die in the shell.
Why did this happen?
The humidity levels during incubation can affect your eggs in a big way. If the humidity levels in your incubator are not set and kept at the correct levels, then the bird in the egg can become shrink-wrapped.
There are membranes inside chicken eggs.
Your incubator needs to be set at a specific humidity (in the ballpark of 50 – 55 %), and this humidity level needs to be kept consistent for the membranes in the egg to stay moist and keep from drying up and sticking to the chick.
If you open the incubator, this will lower the humidity levels in the incubator and will cause the membrane to start to dry out and cause the bird to come out shrink-wrapped.
Opening the incubator will cause a rush of cool air, with lower humidity, to enter the incubator throwing off the humidity in the incubator, and causing the membranes to lose moisture.
If the membrane loses moisture it will dry, shrink around the chick, and will stick to the bird in the egg.
This is especially true during the lockdown stage, at the end of Day 18 of incubation.
What to do about it:
If you help the chick hatch and realize that the chick is shrink-wrapped, then you may need to remove the membrane yourself
If the membrane is wet:
A membrane that is wet will be easier to remove, you can use a pair of tweezers to remove the membrane from the bird’s body.
The membrane should come off relatively easily if wet but you should still practice caution when doing this
If the membrane is dry:
A dry membrane can be safely removed if you dab some water on the membrane to moisten it. Moistening the membrane will turn the dry membrane slimy making it easy to remove.
If you try to peel the membrane off while it’s dry, or if don’t add enough water to the membrane before removal, then the membrane will pull the bird’s feathers out as you remove it.
Using a wet paper towel will help you manage how dry or wet you get the bird’s membrane. Use warm water when doing this to keep the bird from becoming chilled.
You can also give the bird a bath to get the membrane off, this will help the membrane come off easily
Note: If you do decide to give the bird a bath, make sure that you keep the bird from getting too cold after the bath. A chick that gets too cold can die.
How to prevent it next time:
Keep the incubator settings maintained:
If your incubator has any issues that affect its humidity settings, and the incubator’s humidity levels go down or fluctuate, then this can cause the chick to become shrink-wrapped.
To keep this from happening, make sure that the humidity levels of your incubator are kept between 50 and 55% at all times while incubating the eggs, and about 65% during the last 3 days of incubation.
Avoid opening the incubator:
You may want to open the incubator to check on the eggs but you should avoid doing this especially after the eggs have entered the lockdown stage. Not opening the machine will keep the humidity levels of the incubator maintained.
Only open the incubator if it is absolutely necessary to do so.
If you absolutely have to open the incubator, make sure that you do not take the lid all the way off, also, open the lid, do what you need to do, and get out of there as quickly as you can.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other chicken related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Newly Hatched Chick Bleeding, Baby Chick Swollen Abdomen, Baby Chick Not Growing Feathers, Sticky Chick, Chick Hatching With A Dry Membrane