What happens if you loose power while incubating eggs?

[HFFAdmin]

I’ve had this happen a few times, so I wanted to share my experiences in case it helps anyone else.

Not all eggs start developing at the exact same time, so a brief power outage doesn’t always mean trouble. One day, one of my incubators dropped down to 93°F because of a power outage. When the power came back on, another incubator actually spiked to 115°F. Because the eggs weren’t exposed to those temperatures for long, they weren’t affected—the hatch went just fine.

Another time, I lost power two weeks into incubation. When I checked, the incubator had dropped to 78°F. I hooked it up to a battery pack and inverter and brought the temperature back up. After candling the eggs, I saw movement inside and still ended up with a good hatch.

One important thing to remember is that eggs don’t change temperature instantly—it takes time for the temperature inside the egg to drop or rise, so a short period of abnormal temperature usually isn’t a disaster.

Power outages during incubation can be nerve-wracking, but as I’ve seen, eggs are often tougher than we think. I’d love to hear from others—have you had any similar situations? What did you do, and how did your hatch turn out?