O.K., so what did I do wrong?

[Mr. 16 gauge]

I thought that this year I would try raising some game birds for dog training...pigeons are now quite difficult to get, and I don't want to shoot my homers.
So I decided to raise a few quail. I bought a Hovabator incubator, read up on the process with books and the internet, and bought some quail eggs (English whites....they are a variety of corturnix quail). I chose these as they are a bit bigger quail and matured faster.
To make a long story short, only 4 eggs out of 29 hatched! I am so bummed!

I got my eggs from a place in OK that has been in business for a while, so I don't think that the "pulled a fast one" and sent me a bunch of bad eggs. I got them at the beginning of the month 4 days after they were shipped, and I set them aside 'to settle' for 24 hours like most of my sources said to do. I then put them in the incubator (in the automatic egg turner, so they were turned throughout the process) that had been pre warmed, waited the 17 days. I kept careful track of the temperature via a digital thermometer (temp never went about 101.6) and kept track of how many days they were in the incubator. Two days prior to them hatching, I removed them from the egg turner (again, as my sources suggested), then waited....and became disappointed.
I left the lid on an refrained from opening the incubator in order to keep the temp constant. The only thing I think I didn't do correctly was keep track of the water for he humidity......I saw that it was dry about half way through the process, and filled it up immediatley. I had rigged up a piece of tubing with a larger syringe so I could fill the hopper without opening the lid. Unfortunately, the hopper is clear plastic, so it gave the impression that it was filled (optical illusion)....I solved that problem with a little bit of blue food coloring.
Anyway, I will give them a few more days, but I think that the rest of the eggs are dead. I will cut them open later to see what stages of development the embryos are in.
Do you think that the lack of humidity or long shipping time (I thought that they would be shipped overnight) was the cause of my poor hatch, or might I Have done something else wrong?
Thanks in advance...........

[skeet]

much better to buy already hatched more expensive though

[popplecop]

Where's Nulle, he could give the advice you need.

[Mr. 16 gauge]

Well, one of the little chicks died to day......I checked on them a couple of hours before and everyone seemed to be doing fine. I can't find any apparent cause for it's demise (accident, ect).
I figured that I would loose a certain percentage of the chicks, but 25% with one bird is kinda sad.........
This is really turning out to be a bummer of an experience...............

[skeet]

Well when we raised pheasants and chuckers it was usual to lose a few but we bought the birds already hatched. Chickens too. We lost very few chickens though. When we let the hens set they really didn't lose very many a snake would get one or two as they got bigger. But I kept the snakes in the barn cause they took care of the mice and starlings etc. Mr 16..if you can get hatched birds it may make it easier. Heat lamp and water.. hatched are not cheap however.. Luck to uou with the rest

[Mr. 16 gauge]

Well, I went disected out the remaining eggs today....out of the 29 I received, 12 were nothing but yolks...infertile. That's around 41%, which I feel is kind of unacceptable.
The other thing is that I went back and reread the directions, and I found out that I misread them the first time around....I was suppose to add more water to the 2nd bin in the tray when I went to take them out of the turner to hatch.....so it is the inability to read directions on my part why the others didn't hatch.........I'm kinda P.O.ed at myself right now.

At any rate, I'll probably try again later this summer, with eggs from a different source.

Thanks again.............