- Nov 30, 2011
- 260
- 18
- 139
I have had a long and frustrating time with my first hatch. I have a borrowed hova-bator with forced air and an automatic turner. I also broke down and bought an Incuview with the humidifier after the first week.
These eggs have a history, so please bear with me:
These eggs are half of a 36-egg order from University of Illinois for the 4-H embryology program. Another mother has the other half of the order.
The other mom picked up all the eggs from the extension office and for some reason her daughter set all of them. they had been in the incubator for several hours by the time I got there to pick up mine. Of course I couldn't take them home like that, so I returned the next day with my pre-heated incubator (plugged into an invertor in my car). Unfortunately my husband had to drive the eggs home (still plugged in) and he set them up in the house but he didn't add water. I caught the mistake later that evening, so they were without water for about 6 hours on day one.
I had a horrible time regulating the temperature in the incubator. I have the incubator in a walk-through closet with no windows, pets, or drafts. There is a space heater in the room keeping the room temp at an even 72 degrees. Still I had almost constant fluctuations in temp between 96 degrees and as high as 103. the high one lasted only a matter of a couple minutes at the most, I have an alarm on my thermometer and and as soon as it beeped I was right there to let some cool air in. Of course, I don't know what happened when I was out of the house,
Eventually I got the incubator holding pretty steady at 98-99. I searched everywhere and couldn't find a thermometer that would tell the temperature in decimals points so i decided that would have to be close enough. If I tried to get it up to the 99-100 range it got too hot.
During days 17-19 I had to go to a convention with my husband. Who will watch the eggs? We brought them with. Again, we carefully loaded them in the car and kept the incubator running with the inverter. The water ran out on the way home and again they were dry for a few hours. SInce it was day 19, we added more water. I planned to keep them on lockdown, but I woke up at 4 am and started worrying about them. After reading a lot on this forum, I decided improper humidity was a bigger danger than moving the eggs so I fired up the new Incuview. Once it was stabilized, I moved the eggs.
Now I have one pip and a few peeps and some wobbling eggs. We candled them all as we moved then and it seems like there has been growth but not much movement.
I have read that a slightly cooler incubator might make delay the hatch by a couple of days. I'm pretty sure I did everything well enough, but the other mom's eggs hatched today, So of course I'm freaking out.
Any ideas what I can expect?
oh yeah, here is my kid's youtube feed:
These eggs have a history, so please bear with me:
These eggs are half of a 36-egg order from University of Illinois for the 4-H embryology program. Another mother has the other half of the order.
The other mom picked up all the eggs from the extension office and for some reason her daughter set all of them. they had been in the incubator for several hours by the time I got there to pick up mine. Of course I couldn't take them home like that, so I returned the next day with my pre-heated incubator (plugged into an invertor in my car). Unfortunately my husband had to drive the eggs home (still plugged in) and he set them up in the house but he didn't add water. I caught the mistake later that evening, so they were without water for about 6 hours on day one.
I had a horrible time regulating the temperature in the incubator. I have the incubator in a walk-through closet with no windows, pets, or drafts. There is a space heater in the room keeping the room temp at an even 72 degrees. Still I had almost constant fluctuations in temp between 96 degrees and as high as 103. the high one lasted only a matter of a couple minutes at the most, I have an alarm on my thermometer and and as soon as it beeped I was right there to let some cool air in. Of course, I don't know what happened when I was out of the house,
Eventually I got the incubator holding pretty steady at 98-99. I searched everywhere and couldn't find a thermometer that would tell the temperature in decimals points so i decided that would have to be close enough. If I tried to get it up to the 99-100 range it got too hot.
During days 17-19 I had to go to a convention with my husband. Who will watch the eggs? We brought them with. Again, we carefully loaded them in the car and kept the incubator running with the inverter. The water ran out on the way home and again they were dry for a few hours. SInce it was day 19, we added more water. I planned to keep them on lockdown, but I woke up at 4 am and started worrying about them. After reading a lot on this forum, I decided improper humidity was a bigger danger than moving the eggs so I fired up the new Incuview. Once it was stabilized, I moved the eggs.
Now I have one pip and a few peeps and some wobbling eggs. We candled them all as we moved then and it seems like there has been growth but not much movement.
I have read that a slightly cooler incubator might make delay the hatch by a couple of days. I'm pretty sure I did everything well enough, but the other mom's eggs hatched today, So of course I'm freaking out.
Any ideas what I can expect?
oh yeah, here is my kid's youtube feed: