Wow! I had no idea. Ok. That helps me be much more patient.
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The tape only touches in a few small places. The rest is not sticky and only covering the hole to reduce airflow. Hopefully I didn’t do more harm than good.
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I was looking through recent-ish records not long ago so I can confirm than I had a healthy clutch hatch at 77 days a few years ago. I was really on pins and needles but they were fine.
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Thanks for looking at your records, @Caryl. That was really nice of you to look it up and do such exact math.
I guess I will still worry until proven otherwise. A bad year of 75% of my babies not eating (all from totally unrelated parents) and two clutches dead in the egg after looking perfect for the entire incubation period…any girl’s gonna worry, right?
Sigh. Worry is part of life I suppose. I had thought last year if I had only cut one of those dead eggs open in time, maybe I could have helped it. But now that I’ve done it, I’ve changed my mind forever. It’s just a helpless feeling no matter what.
Back to waiting.
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I felt that way with one of my BP eggs that pipped, got infested with maggots which I then cleaned out and then lost the baby. Before I came to terms I was blaming myself all the way, and then I figured out the baby had quite a few spine kinks…
As someone who suffers from a panic disorder stemming from General Anxiety I totally get the worrying part, every season there are a few times where I worry myself sick about the process. It’s worse when females are near laying and eggs enter incubation since so much can go wrong. Life really does like throwing rocks at us sometimes 
I do hope that your little ones can pull through and that they all hatch healthy 
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Thanks. It’s nice to know I’m not alone. I’ve always heard that misery loves company, but I guess worry and anxiety and everything else…and happiness and excitement…that is to say, HUMANS like company.
Thanks to you all for being here. It’s much better than going it alone.
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@caryl is great that way! Always in the “help” mode! 
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You nailed it. Having a supportive community off folks who care about each other and the animals means a lot any time. It’s invaluable when we’re stressing about some aspect of this delightful, frustrating, satisfying, alarming, exciting, empowering, scary at times hobby.
You and your family aren’t in it alone. I know when I’ve been busy spinning myself up with worry because there was nothing else I could do at that moment, having this community meant everything.
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Well, guess who decided to poke away bandages and say hello?
As of 12 AM this morning, little Marvel baby was the only one pipping. As of 7 AM this morning, another sibling had cut his egg, crawled out, and died. I’m so sad. How common is it for babies to die right after hatching?
No other eggs have any slits in them, yet. I guess time will tell if the rest are okay…
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Awwww! I’m sad for you but I’m glad at the same time. Hopefully you’ll get some answers here as to what the reason could be for the untimely death of the one babe. However I celebrate with you for the live babe. Bittersweet it is….. 
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I have a few pics of the DOA baby if you all were able to see why it died, but I assume the community won’t want me to post them? Am I right about that, @noodlehaus ?
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I believe it’s allowed because I’ve seen this before. However there is a way to blur the picture if others don’t want to view it.
But I would most definitely wait to see what @noodlehaus advises before posting…..
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Any pics of a DOA should be placed behind a spoiler, as far as I’m aware. You’ll want to use either the hide details or blur spoiler options in the post editor. They can be found by clicking the + button in the toolbar:
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Thanks for that screen shot, Jess. I never could have figured out how to do it without that.
If anyone wants to take a peek at these photos, I’m all for learning about this amazing, heartbreaking, nerve wracking, astounding miracle called life (and its partner, death). There was a long-ish imbilical cord (I forget the real name for it), and a hollow spot around where its lungs would be internally. Head doesn’t dome at all. I should have taken a weight, but I didn’t think to in my sadness. It seemed quite small compared to my memory from hatchlings last year. No kinks that I could tell, although I wondered at the first glance because its head was pretty torqued when I found it.
Anyway, maybe it’ll remain a mystery, but if any of you have experiences to add to mine (preferably stories that give me hope for the remaining 12 eggs that still haven’t pipped), I’m all ears.
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On a happier note, Lucky Little Marvel is still peeking around curiously while his buddies are denting in…surely they will pip soon! Day 72 and counting for them…
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YOLK STALK. That’s what the umbilical cord is called. Thank you, Google.
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The extremely concave lung area is concerning, but that is the only real red flag I see…
Did the little one have any vermiculite in its mouth? I saw its mouth open in that initial photo, maybe that could be a cause but I know that they do open their mouths in their death throws too so the vermiculite could’ve gotten in there afterwards
There may have been an internal issue, thinking about the concaved spot…
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Yes, its mouth was full of vermiculite. I searched for fine vermiculite by the brand I had heard was good, and they only had medium and super fine. No plain “fine.” I went with super fine and now I wonder if that was a bad call. I did rinse the substrate out before I took the clean pictures. My first thought was suffocation by too-fine of vermiculite, but Dean told me he’s never had a baby die from vermiculite and he uses super fine, too. I had wondered if I should quickly switch them to sphagnum or perlite to avoid a similar end for the other eggs once they pip, but I didn’t want to disturb them unnecessarily if that wasn’t the real issue.
There does seem to be a little bulge right above the extremely concave lung area, too, so I wonder if that was more likely to be the main cause, rather than the vermiculite.
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I wouldn’t expect the vermiculite to be the issue, it’s odd that there was a bunch in the mouth but my guess is there was some probably writhing and gasping going on. If I had to hazard a guess without a necropsy, I’d say either lung or heart defect based on the presentation.
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I’m so, so, so grateful I didn’t have to watch it suffer…
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