First Time Egg Candler Scared!

[scflock]

You guys have a nice thread going here. Just to chime in, I paid over $40 for a half dozen silkie eggs, shipped from several states away! I don't know what I was thinking using shipped eggs for my first go! I'm a nervous wreck about the air cells (Amy, you've given great advice) mine look very dipped on one side. Anyway, I'm chatting with my landlord down the road at the mailboxes and I tell him about my new incubator & the eggs and he tells me he has fertile eggs, all kinds of breeds, including silkies & I can have eggs whenever I want for FREE! I didn't even know he had chickens on his property! He also offered me fertile peacock eggs!

So now I'm kicking myself for spending all this money. At least I see 3 little babies in the eggs. Tomorrow is day 7, the rest look clear (like the pics posted above) but I'll wait at least till day 10!

When you say "dipped", do you mean one side is much lower than the other? All of mine usually turn out that way. No problem

 

[WVduckchick]

When you say "dipped", do you mean one side is much lower than the other? All of mine usually turn out that way. No problem

You must have missed my question about the air cells dipping to one side vs. staying flat. Most of my last hatch stayed pretty flat, but the reference pictures are all slanted, so I asked why. I think we came up with either way is fine/normal... lol

 

[AmyLynn2374]

Ok, so dipped/tilted is probably more normal, but if not, its not necessarily a bad thing. Thanks!

Plus, they dip even more after lockdown when MOST people don't see them....lol

Thanks! It looks like they grow a ton in the next couple days. If all goes well.

I think they grow more between days 14-18 than they do at any other checkpoint time period.

You guys have a nice thread going here. Just to chime in, I paid over $40 for a half dozen silkie eggs, shipped from several states away! I don't know what I was thinking using shipped eggs for my first go! I'm a nervous wreck about the air cells (Amy, you've given great advice) mine look very dipped on one side. Anyway, I'm chatting with my landlord down the road at the mailboxes and I tell him about my new incubator & the eggs and he tells me he has fertile eggs, all kinds of breeds, including silkies & I can have eggs whenever I want for FREE! I didn't even know he had chickens on his property! He also offered me fertile peacock eggs!

So now I'm kicking myself for spending all this money. At least I see 3 little babies in the eggs. Tomorrow is day 7, the rest look clear (like the pics posted above) but I'll wait at least till day 10!

That's great. That's how I started. My sister raises chickens. She's an hour away, but it beats shipping...lol and free beats everything...lol

When you say "dipped", do you mean one side is much lower than the other? All of mine usually turn out that way. No problem

You must have missed my question about the air cells dipping to one side vs. staying flat. Most of my last hatch stayed pretty flat, but the reference pictures are all slanted, so I asked why. I think we came up with either way is fine/normal... lol

We need a Gibbs' slap emoticon so I can just slap him for not reading the whole convo....lol

 

[WVduckchick]

We need a Gibbs' slap emoticon so I can just slap him for not reading the whole convo....lol

Heehee... Gotta love Gibbs, so I wholeheartedly agree

 

[scflock]

Heehee...  Gotta love Gibbs, so I wholeheartedly agree 

I was busy trying to find a picture of a cockadoodle

 

[sideWing]

They look decent to me.

Amy, humidity question. I'm kind of assuming my heat was a little low at the start of this incubation. I'm guessing they may hatch a little late, but I'm only about 60% on that feeling. If I raise the humidity to 65%-75% on day 18 do I run the risk of drowning them if they hatch a day or so late? What would be erring on the side of caution for the chicks? Early humidity rise or a late humidity rise?

Thanks!

 

[RubyNala97]

I should have started with free eggs, but I really really really want to have some nice Blue Laced Red Wyandottes. At this point I will be lucky to get one. Peacocks are loud, but they are freaking awesome. If I had a free supply of cool eggs my bator would never get unplugged. I'm a mess as it is. I'm already thinking about the next batch. 

I know! I'm really happy I invested in a good incubator cus I'm hooked now!! I don't know much about different chicken breeds...that's my next thing to obsess about! I'm thinking black copper marans for the cool dark eggs! I'm gonna look up the kind you're hatching!

 

[AmyLynn2374]

Amy, humidity question. I'm kind of assuming my heat was a little low at the start of this incubation. I'm guessing they may hatch a little late, but I'm only about 60% on that feeling. If I raise the humidity to 65%-75% on day 18 do I run the risk of drowning them if they hatch a day or so late? What would be erring on the side of caution for the chicks? Early humidity rise or a late humidity rise?

Thanks!

No, it shouldn't as long as your air cells are where they should be for lockdown. If you are too worried though, you can always push lockdown back and lockdown day 19 as long as there are no pips.

 

[sideWing]

No, it shouldn't as long as your air cells are where they should be for lockdown. If you are too worried though, you can always push lockdown back and lockdown day 19 as long as there are no pips.

Rookie question. So when you increase humidity does it add moisture to the lower body part of the egg, the air sac area or both?

 

[AmyLynn2374]

Rookie question. So when you increase humidity does it add moisture to the lower body part of the egg, the air sac area or both?

Technically it doesn't "add" moisture to the egg. Humidity controls how much of the egg's moisture is let "out". If you have high humidity the air outside the egg is saturated with moisture. This saturated air keeps the egg from loosing it's moisture. If the air outside the egg has low humidity and is dry, the moisture inside the egg will be released to evaporate in the dryer incubator air. This in turn allows the air cell to grow (or not). If the humidity has been too high over the majority of the incubation period and has kept the egg from loosing enough moisture when it is time to hatch there is a possibility that the chick will pip into the air cell, if it is even big enough for him to find and when he does the excess moisture can find it's way into the air cell via the pip hole where the chick would aspirate on it. Another thing that can happen is a smaller air cell gives the chick more room to grow and it's possible that if the chick grows too large it can have trouble turning to complete the pip and hatching process. The flip side of that is if the air cell grows too big (due to too little humidity), the membrane can collapse and "shrink" (due to dryness) around the chick and effectively "shrink wrapping the chick making it impossible for it to move or do anything more than possibly an internal pip.