One little chick has hatched, but what do I do now?

Hi all. Well, after a long 3 weeks of hard work incubating my Dutch bantam eggs, my work is starting to pay off as yesterday my very first chick hatched which is my first attempt at hatching. Wow, I didn't realise how exciting it was to see a newborn chick slowly break out of the shell into the big wide world, and I am a fully grown man as well!

Anyway, that aside I am now wondering about the rest of the eggs. So, I have 6 eggs in my mini incubator and one hatched a day early and is doing well, it is still in the incubator as I noticed last night that another egg had pipped and I read that I shouldn't lift the lid if there are other eggs pipping as I wanted to move the newborn into a brooder box. However, I got up this morning and there is still no further development in the pipping. Every now and again I can see the shell around the pipped hole move out so I know that it still alive and trying to get out. Reading various articles I know that the whole pipping to zipping process can take anything upto 36 hours and I know that assisting a chick out of its shell should only be the last resort.

My main concern at the moment is the day old chick I have in the incubator, I really want to move it into the brooder box but how can I do that if I still have eggs pipping, I don't want to undo all my hard work at this stage. I don't know if the other eggs will hatch, even if a 1 or 2 more do start pipping then it could be another day or so and in the meantime I have my first chick trapped inside the incubator, it could be days before I can move it into the brooder box once all the other eggs have hatched.

Is it safe to keep a chick in a small incubator for this length of time as I am worried about it getting too hot in there and not much ventilation.

Please advise what I should do, many thanks!

in my opinion what I would do is open the incubator as quick as possible as I can grab the chick and put it in the brooder and close the incubator as soon as I get my hand out the thing.but that's what I would do

Yes I thought about that but I don't want to scare the chick by doing a sudden grab and also I heard that even by lifting the lid of the incubator can be fatal for the other eggs, especially if they are pipping. Oh what a dilemma!

well how long would the chick be in there that chick may get too hot but I have no other options is he fluffy already

Yes the first chick is all fluffed out and dry, have just noticed that the other egg that started pipping last night has made a bit of a bigger hole in the last hour so hopefully it may not be too long until that has hatched out. In that case I might wait until he/she has hatched, open the lid and take out the one that's ready and quickly put the lid back on so the newborn can dry out, but I will probably wait a good few hours to do that so the newborn chick doesn't get exposed to a sudden temperature drop.

mark22 said:

Yes I thought about that but I don't want to scare the chick by doing a sudden grab and also I heard that even by lifting the lid of the incubator can be fatal for the other eggs, especially if they are pipping. Oh what a dilemma!

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Opening the lid is not signing a death warrant no matter how many times some say it is... What opening up does is let the humidity out and drops the temp, neither will kill the egg/embryo if they are returned to acceptable levels soon enough... Thus it's a good practice to avoid issues but not a hard fast rule, especially if the unhatched chick is still mostly in the egg with just a small pip hole... The biggest issue is the humidity drop as it's hard for some people to get the higher humidity back up fast enough after the lid is cracked... Generally the incubator will bring the temp back in a few minutes, so that is pretty much a non-issue... If you are concerned about humidity, take a clean fresh paper towel and hit it with some hot water and swap the chick out and put in the paper towel... I say hot because by the you actually do the swap the water will have cooled off anyway...

I pull every chick (and broken shell) out as soon as the chick dries off and is fluffy, assuming no other fresh and 'wet' chicks are in there at the time, if there is a wet newly hatched chick I wait... I don't practice any lock down, and this season I'm running a 94% hatch rate across chickens, guineas and peas, so I know full well it's not the death sentence some claim... I actually have a mini humidifier in the incubator and I use that to restore my humidity levels within minutes since I don't practice a lockdown...

tlb625 said:

well how long would the chick be in there that chick may get too hot but I have no other options is he fluffy already

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The newly hatched chick can easily handle the incubator temps for the initial day or two...

It is not ideal to be lifting the lid everytime one hatches and yes the fluctuation in humidity can shrink wrap the others. Are there any others pipped? If so I would wait for the other to hatch and move them together. I don't like to leave them in there any longer than 24 hours because after that you risk losing them to dehydration.