- Jan 11, 2012
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This post is brought to us by BYC sponsor Fleming Outdoors
Eric Fleming's Guide to Hatch Day
We have finally reached our hatch day! We now have 15 baby chicks from our original 21 eggs. Of the 21 eggs, 2 eggs were bad and 4 eggs fully developed but never made any effort for hatch out. For some reason of the 4 eggs that did not hatch, 3 were Marans (dark colored egg). We only got 1 Maran egg to hatch.
When I walked in on Monday morning we had 12 of the 15 eggs hatch overnight so we moved them to the brooder and left 2 in the incubator to help encourage the other chicks to hatch. I noticed that the chicks in the egg were much more active in trying to get out of the shell if the other chicks were in the incubator walking and chirping. At that point we began filming the 3 eggs that had not hatched yet and got some great footage of one of the chicks hatching out of the shell. You can see this at the video below at the 5:00 minute mark.
We had one of the last 3 eggs that broke the shell but had trouble getting out of the shell. I gave him a full day and he never made any progress. All he would do is chirp. So we removed the part of the shell that was not stuck to him very carefully. Once we got to the part that was stuck to him (membrane inside the shell had dried out and stuck to his back) we got some warm water and dripped it on the membrane until it became good and wet. At that point we were able to remove the shell and membrane from the chick with no harm done to the chick whatsoever. If we had not intervened this chick would have never made it out of the shell.
Once we got all of our chicks into the brooder then we cleaned out our incubator with some water and Clorox. This way it removes any bacteria that could have been left by the egg shells. The brooder we moved the chicks to is a Poultry Box Brooder. We will have another video on the this brooder and the supplies you will need to start brooding your new chicks.
Learn more and visit Fleming Outdoors!
Guide to Incubating and Hatching - Part 2!
Guide to Incubating and Hatching - Part 3!
Do you have a hatch day coming up? Share your hatching experiences!
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