My First Babies!!

June 19th we set 41 eggs. One week later we had 24 fertile "keepers." Had 2 questionable ones when I candled them one last time before taking the eggs out of the turner and going into lockdown on Saturday morning.  Had 3 pip yesterday morning. Woke up at 4:30 to one little chick and 2 more starting to zip.  Have 6 more pips so far. WHAT A LEARNING EXPERIENCE!!

Going to move the 3 out of the incubator later this morning, will post more pics then.  They are kicking around the other eggs more than I'd like.  Catching heck from DH about it...Yesterday he sat down next to the incubator when 3 of them had pipped and bumped the whole thing. Eggs went rolling everywhere & I think I had a mild coronary stressing about it!  So now when the little chicks are bouncing around the unhatched/pipped eggs he's telling me, "See...it wasn't such a big deal!" What a brat. 

As far as incubating...If I can hatch them ANYONE can hatch them!  Had a hard time getting the incubator stabilized after I put the eggs in. Because I don't have a fan (it's a "still-air" model") I felt it was impossible to get a consistent temperature (especially with the crazy hot weather we've been having). I had a thermometer at the top of the eggs and another one resting on the bottom.  They had a 5-7 degree difference!  Went with 102 for the top one, so the bottom one was around 96...tried to average it out. Guess it worked.  Pretty bizarre how as the eggs developed the temperatures had less of a difference, though.

I only had my roo for just over a month, so fertility was just under 60%. Better than I was expecting really.

All together now....AWWWWWW!