Set my first eggs ever this morning

Got up a little early this morning to set 32 eggs for the first time.  I may need a little hand holding.  I'm a little anxious about it since I've never hatched before and the anticipation of wondering if any of those eggs are even fertile is killing me.  Not to mention I feel like I'm starting out at a slight disadvantage because we're using a still air incubator (I know forced air would be better, but this is what we could afford at the time) and hand turning (again, couldn't really justify the cost of an auto turner for what may be a one time, or a once a year, event).  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I don't have to adjust the incubator temp. once the eggs come up to temp. because last time I tried to do that it took a good 3 hours (and I do have to go to work today).  I'm also a little nervous about the temperature drop that will inevitably happen when I open the 'bator 3 times a day to turn the eggs and how long it will need to be open to candle 32 eggs.  But I was happy to wake up this  morning to find the temperature holding steady and the humidity spot on 50%. 

Day 3 and all's well, as far as I can tell.  Temperature and humidity are holding steady and recover quickly after we have to open the incubator to turn the eggs.  I'm a bit concerned that the temp. might be a little low, but I'd rather let it be a little low and wait a few days longer for them to hatch than to have it too high and kill them, and each time I've tried to increase the temperature "just a little" it's jumped quite a bit.  For the most part it's holding steady at 100 so I'm going to leave it alone. 

Don't tell DH, but I snuck one of the eggs out of the incubator this morning and candled it to see if I could see anything at all (I told him candling day was tomorrow, he'd be a little upset if he knew I did one this morning) and I saw veins!  It's so reassuring to know that at least some of those eggs are fertile and can develop.  Hopefully they'll keep going all the way to hatch.

One thought I had this morning about hand turning.  How important is it to turn the eggs at the same time each day?  Does it really make that big a difference in development or is it more so the human doing the turning has a schedule and it's harder for them to forget to do it?  Most days turning at about the same time isn't a problem, but if the weather doesn't cooperate I can't come home over lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays to do it at 12:30(ish).  It is what it is, so there's nothing we can do to change that.  But it got me to wondering whether the "turn at the same time each day" advice was more for ideal development or so that people don't forget to do it.

Day 4 and things are still going pretty good.  I woke up this morning to find the temp. in my house had dropped 4* overnight, and the temp. in the incubator had dropped to 98.  I managed to adjust it just a little without setting it to cook! 

This afternoon we candled.  Out of 32 eggs, 11 were clear.  We put 21 back in the incubator, but 7 of those are questionable.  They didn't look quite like the others, but they weren't clear either.  So we'll candle again on Tuesday and see if anything has changed with those eggs.  The 11 that we decided were clear we cracked open to check and sure enough, they were clear.  One of them looked like it had just a little bit of veining starting to develop, but clearly had quit very early on.  The others looked just like the eggs we crack for breakfast.  As soon as it cools down enough, the girls are going to enjoy a nice 11 egg "omlet."  All of my EE and Ameraucana eggs were fertile, exactly half of the speckled sussex eggs were fertile, and just under half (I think) of the orpington eggs were fertile.  Not a single one of my wyandotte eggs were fertile, which isn't a big loss since she's the nastiest hen I have (her attitude has earned her a new home in the crock pot this fall).

Day 5 and I'm a happy camper.  Didn't do much with the eggs today, but DH decided he couldn't wait until Tuesday to candle the questionable eggs.  Two of them were very clearly not developing, and when we cracked them open they were obviously infertile with absolutely no development at all.  Three of them we could see the veining very clearly, so we were confident that they were no longer "questionable" and moved them back over with the good eggs.  The remaining two are probably also good and we could see some veins, but they are darker green eggs so it's hard to see well.  One of them had what I thought maybe could have been a blood ring, but is probably just a vein.  That leaves us with 19 out of 32 that are fertile and developing and us crossing our fingers that all 19 make it to lock down.  That makes our fertility 59%.  Not bad considering we'd never actually seen the rooster mount any of the hens and the top hen always gave him the cold shoulder when he would dance for her (she never ran away, but she always just gave him this look that said she was not impressed).

Day 7 and we have swimmers!  Most of the green eggs are much harder to visualize now than they were on day 4, so I think we're sort of stuck until closer to lockdown to see if we have any quitters.  But most of the eggs had movement (that was not caused by my unsteady hand) tonight and some were really active.