Classroom Hatch: Set 4/3/12

[gnatboy911]

Hey guys, I'm a 3rd grade teacher in western Colorado. I just filled the incubator with 42 eggs today. We began our egg lessons a couple weeks ago, learning about the different parts, incubation period, etc. The kids are very excited. This is the first time I've incubated eggs myself, so I'm nervous about the hatch. I have done lots of reading though. I set up the incubator on Sunday night to get the temperature and humidity stabilized. Right now it is hovering between 99 and 100 degrees, and it is right about 50% humidity.

Wish me luck!!

gnatboy911.

 

[wistlindixie]

Hi! I'm a second grade teacher and I've hatched chicks with my class before. I hatched last year with the incubator at home via webcam. This year, I tried having the incubator at school. Someone turned the temp up to 122 on "accident" and it stayed there for about 3 hours. Needless to say, we lost 12 viable silkie eggs. :-( I've just ordered more eggs and the incubator is back at home and going live on ustream. You can watch with us if you'd like! Our class blog is www.chappell2nd.blogspot.com Good luck!!

 

[abbylane35]

Good luck to both of you! I just completed a hatch with my 7th and 8th grade Enrichment kids at school. It was okay, but my hatch rate was horrible. I am thinking that the temps at night and on the weekends threw my incubator temps, because the chicks hatched late (day 23) and many didn't hatch (although they had fully developed chicks in the eggs). I have hatched many times with great success, so this really disappointed me.

@wistlindixie...I was afraid that someone would accidentally mess with the temp...but I kept the incubator right by my desk and it seemed to stay okay...not that someone couldn't have turned the knob

Good luck!!! and keep us posted!

 

[SIMZ]

Fun!! I did this with a class a few months ago and we all loved it! My favorite part was finally seeing one of the leghorns that we had been candling during incubation.

Let us know how it goes!

 

[gnatboy911]

Well after reading a TON of posts about differences in hatching/incubating methods mainly in regards to humidity I am thoroughly stressed out about my hatch. Some people had great success with the same results that others failed with. I just hope I get some to hatch or the kids will be really bummed out....me too!

gnatboy911

 

[AinaWGSD]

Well after reading a TON of posts about differences in hatching/incubating methods mainly in regards to humidity I am thoroughly stressed out about my hatch. Some people had great success with the same results that others failed with. I just hope I get some to hatch or the kids will be really bummed out....me too!

gnatboy911

I know exactly how you feel! I'm on my first hatch, and I started at 50% humidity after some light research into basic requirements for incubation. Then I read about dry incubation, and how many people have problems with chicks drowning after internal pip because the humidity was too high. So I stressed about the humidity being too high! I started to let my incubator "dry down" to do a dry incubation. But then I got stressed about the humidity being too low and shrink wrapping the chicks and killing them! So, since this is my first try, I decided to go somewhat in the middle. I add water when the humidity drops below 33-35% and try not to let it get above 40-45%. I feel least stressed when the humidity is hanging out around 40% although really it's just because that seems like a nice number between dry incubation and the 50% humidity that I read when I first looked into hatching, I have no experience to base that on.

Keep an eye on your air sacs. Someone here posted an excellent diagram of where the air sac development should be on days 7, 14, and 18. It really helped me relax about my humidity because my eggs seemed to be developing right on schedule according to air sac size, so I feel that the humidity has been just about right. If your air sacs seem too small, decrease the humidity. If they seem a bit too high for the gestational age, increase it a bit. Then cross your fingers and hope for the best like I'm sure everyone does their first time hatching. Let's see if I can find that chart for you.

Here it is:

 

[gnatboy911]

I've decided to do the same thing. My incubator is right about 40% now. I'm only on day 3 so I have a feeling its going to be a long 3 weeks! I'll do my first candling on day 7 and see how they compare to the chart, thanks for posting. I think the biggest thing to avoid the 'shrink wrapping' is to really boost the humidity (70-80) on the last 3 days (at least thats the idea i'm getting from research) Someone even said they mist distilled water a couple times a day during the last 3 days. When are yours due to hatch?

Gnatboy911

 

[AinaWGSD]

Mine are due to hatch on Tuesday. I may have to look into getting a spray bottle for misting to prevent shrink-wrapping. I have a second hatch going in the same incubator that will need to continue being turned during lockdown, so I have to open the incubator anyway. I did set the second hatch in an egg carton so that I can turn the entire group at once hoping that I can keep humidity loss during lockdown to a minimum. It's also convenient to be able to know for sure which eggs belong in the first hatch and which eggs belong in the second hatch.

 

[gnatboy911]

Good luck with your hatch. Keep us posted on how it goes, how do they look when you candle them? Are they all viable and ready to hatch?

 

[gnatboy911]

Just an update....candled all the eggs today. Had a large number that were pretty dark throughout with lots of veins. Did have some that definitely didn't have much going on; they were fairly clear and you could see the yolk (darker area floating around) I decided to leave them in for a few more days just in case.

The kids were pretty excited to be able to look at them and see the developments.