February 2017 Hatch-a-long

[orrpeople]

Thinking about doing a duo incubator staggered hatch primarily because I want to be done with trying to arrange exact shipping and/or egg pick up dates. Secondly, I think I want to be done incubating by mid march and move forward with my grow outs, then culling and figuring out possible breeding groups before the crazy heat of summer picks up.
Inexpensive Hovabators on ebay are still air. Anyone with success with these?

 

[jbenson]

Wasn't gonna hatch this year, so much work both maintaining chicks and selling the birds. DH said he wanted to, but he doesn't know the details to hatching so my job is to get them from egg to chick and his is supposed to be the rest. I will probably end up doing the maintaining since the brooding house is right next to the coops, but I am totally not doing the selling. Set 58 bantam white faced black Spanish and 2 polish (stupid polish just refuse to lay during the winter).

 

[HeritageHenNut]

Wasn't gonna hatch this year, so much work both maintaining chicks and selling the birds. DH said he wanted to, but he doesn't know the details to hatching so my job is to get them from egg to chick and his is supposed to be the rest. I will probably end up doing the maintaining since the brooding house is right next to the coops, but I am totally not doing the selling. Set 58 bantam white faced black Spanish and 2 polish (stupid polish just refuse to lay during the winter).

lol, yeah my Polish stopped laying about a months ago except for my one Buff-Laced hen who I swear never stops. Love White-Faced black Spanish!

 

[danielkbrantley]

Another question: How far along in the incubation process do eggs typically explode (if they're gonna)? As this is just my second time doing it, I'm hesitant to cull eggs I think are duds until I'm absolutely sure. And since that may take another week or so (today is day 8), I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to end up with a big, hot, stinking mess.

 

[SunHwaKwon]

Thinking about doing a duo incubator staggered hatch primarily because I want to be done with trying to arrange exact shipping and/or egg pick up dates. Secondly, I think I want to be done incubating by mid march and move forward with my grow outs, then culling and figuring out possible breeding groups before the crazy heat of summer picks up.
Inexpensive Hovabators on ebay are still air. Anyone with success with these?

Will you just be using it as a hatcher?

 

[SunHwaKwon]

Another question: How far along in the incubation process do eggs typically explode (if they're gonna)? As this is just my second time doing it, I'm hesitant to cull eggs I think are duds until I'm absolutely sure. And since that may take another week or so (today is day 8), I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to end up with a big, hot, stinking mess.

Smell the eggs. You'll know if one is rotten, and in that case remove that and don't bother with the rest. I've done the same thing, hanging on to some until lockdown or longer just in case. As long as it doesn't stink, it's not really a risk.

 

[orrpeople]

Will you just be using it as a hatcher?

I think so. I'd like to be able to move the "lockdown ready" eggs to a separate bator for hatching, leaving the rest until it's their turn to hatch out. Because I have small incubator space, being able to rotate them through might expedite my process a bit.

 

[CuzChickens]

Another question: How far along in the incubation process do eggs typically explode (if they're gonna)? As this is just my second time doing it, I'm hesitant to cull eggs I think are duds until I'm absolutely sure. And since that may take another week or so (today is day 8), I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to end up with a big, hot, stinking mess.

I think the latest eggs usually explode by is day 12.

 

[CuzChickens]

Set 27 eggs today, so they should hatch the last day of February! (Which is 4 days before my one year chicken keeping anniversary.

I set mixed breed eggs, but there were some really pretty eggs that I will be interested in seeing what they look like as chicks and adults and also see if they carry those pretty egg laying traits.

Here comes MORE trouble. Chicks from the last hatch are a week old today and got to go outside for about 30 minutes this morning with a heating pad, and they loved the weeds.

 

[supersymmetry]

@CuzChickens those week-olds are adorable! Congrats on the anniversary... it's going to be a good year!