Day 20 and No pip :(

Today is day 20, and none have pipped. My eggs went into the bator Feb 22..humidity has been at 40-50%.
Icandled at day 17 have 9 eggs...8 we saw movements before lock down

Am I being to impatient?

Yes, too soon to worry

That 21 day thing is just a guideline. If everything is exactly right then the eggs will hatch somewhere around 21 days after you start them in the incubator. But there are a lot of things that can make a chick hatch early or late; heredity, humidity, how or how long the eggs were stored, or just basic differences in the eggs themselves. A really big factor is average incubating temperature. If the average temperature is too warm even by a small amount, hatch can be early, If t is a bit low, hatch can be late, maybe by two or three days.

Yes it is too early to worry. Patience is your friend, hard as that can be. Good luck!

Alright thanks lol my heart is set for at least 1 to hatch...however I don't have my brooder set up either lol...

End of day 20 still no pip

Welcome to BYC I've had an entire hatch under a broody hen (you don't get more optimal than that) start on day 22 only. As Ridgerunner said above, the 21 days timeframe is a guide only. The majority of chicken eggs hatch after roughly 21 days, but that said, I've had them hatch on days 18, 19, 21, 22, 23 and 25. Patience! Good luck with your hatch!

Thank you! Today is day 21..... No pips yet still hard thinking all this time your gonna have Chickie's than Nada happens!! Lol

It is hard. We’ve all been there one way or another. The first hatch with an incubator can be really rough because of the unknowns and your expectations. If things don’t go perfectly you are worried that you did something wrong.

I had some eggs pipping when I went into lockdown. It took a few hatches to get the incubator tweaked to where most of the eggs now hatch around Day 21 instead of Day 19. Still, under a broody or in my incubator I occasionally get eggs hatching as much as two day early. If it were in my incubator only I’d think there was something wrong, but it happens under a broody hen too. I figure if the chicks hatch within 24 hours either way of the ideal time they were right on time.

Some hatches are over within 24 hours or less of the first one pipping. Some hatched stretch out more than two full days. In one hatch last year one chick hatched out more than 24 hours before any other egg had even pipped. Then the next sixteen chicks all hatched within less than 18 hours. Each hatch is unique.

None of us can give you any guarantees about what will happen with a hatch, but you saw movement. You are doing something right, so as hard as it is, be patient.

Good luck!

After what day do I open and see what's wrong or went wrong? My son is so excited and if none of my eggs hatch I'm gonna go to tsc and get him 4-5,chicks and a few duckies lol..he's just waiting for them to hatch so bad and idk what to tell him lol I said they are on Chicky time not our time lol I see no pip and hear nothing and my eggs haven't moved.

That’s a hard question and different people will give you different answers. As long as they have not pipped I’d suggest about day 23 you do the float test. Take any unpipped egg and put it in a bowl of still lukewarm water. If anything is alive in there the egg will wiggle on its own. If it stays dead still, well sorry. If the egg has external pipped, obviously you cannot do this.

If one wiggles you could put it back in the incubator a little longer. It could still hatch on its own. There are some threads on here about assisting a hatch but I don’t have a link.

One problem with assisting a hatch is that the chick has to be ready to hatch or you will kill it. It needs to have absorbed the yolk, dried up blood vessels outside its body and absorbed that blood, and learned to breathe air instead of living in a liquid environment. If you try to help before it is ready you take a big chance of it bleeding to death or just dying. It’s not a good position to be in.