you have 4 days in advance to hatch thunderhawk mate if you start at day 1 ... 6days in advance to hatch if you start on day 3 .... are you telling me your luck is that bad that you are breeding others in those days? or you started breeding thunderhawk at day 4 (there is a big difference in here)
events are too much??? events give you free UR or SR animal if it is too much just stop playing or forget about the event & focus on the next event... I rather S8 throw me countless events (I can choose to play or skip & save my apples for other event I choose) than throwing me a storybook quest once every 3months with maybe 1million apples save up
if you are so bad luck in just breeding thunderhawk you should be getting rare or super rare or maybe 40hr+ fails... well your runes should be racking up at least 4 or more per breed ... well the expand is dreadful (this I agree with you) but you should be able to expand pretty fast than other players