Top Ten Hatching Misinformations

Date sort Score sort
casportpony

casportpony

🦚🦆🦃🐔
BYC Staff
Project Manager
Premium Feather Member
12 Years
Jun 24, 2012
150,890
453,756
2,502
The Golden State
Newly hatched chicks can *always* go 72 hours without water and food - Wrong! Keep word is always... depending on how they were incubated, this is *not* always true. Sometimes they will be mildly to moderately dehydrated when they hatch.

-Kathy

Edited to add:
Please feel free to add to the list.
 
Last edited:
X2
It also has a lot to do with breeder nutrition, especially the hen.

Also, the sooner they get food after the hatch, the more robust they'll be.
 
Last edited:
One very important thing that I often forget about is their first poop... When I don't see it in my chicks or ducklings, I know they are dehydrated, though I guess other things could cause it, but here it's usually corrected by getting them to drink or by giving fluids orally. Note: novice hatchers, please so not attempt to give fluids orally without help from a vet or an experienced bird owner as aspiration can occur, which can be fatal.

-Kathy
 
Good idea for a thread.

Some of the weirder beliefs and advices given that I've heard about hatching:

  • Spray, soak or wipe your eggs with water or other fluids to help loosen the membrane so the chick can hatch. That's one thing with a waterfowl, and another thing with a land fowl. Humidity is necessary, but messing around with it haphazardly costs chicks their lives. I suggest don't soak, spray or wipe down internally or externally pipped chicken eggs unless you know what you're doing and why.
  • Let the eggs roll around, or roll it yourself pretty regularly, so the chick can position itself how it wants. Under a hen they do not naturally have any ability to roll around autonomously, that's not natural for the species, and having either somebody rolling them or the ability to roll their egg around themselves as they're trying to hatch can in fact be fatal.
  • Never attempt to help hatch a chick, you'll kill it. Actually, it's not always fatal, not even in the majority of cases in my opinion. I would recommend newbies read up on how to assist hatching before doing it, and also record or at the very least consider the reasons why it needed help hatching. Sometimes it's due to accidental interference or husbandry faults and therefore not a fault in the chick, but sometimes it's due to genetic faults and shouldn't be bred on with. (Case in point, one of my family lines. Congenital malpositioning in the egg just prior to hatch. All their chicks need help to hatch. Lesson learned in retrospect unfortunately). ;)

Best wishes.
 
Incubating more rounded eggs will result in more pullets and pointy eggs will result in more cockerels..

Wrong...
big_smile.png
 
You can candle an egg before incubation and tell if it is fertile or not. (one member was told this by the person who was selling her some hatching eggs.)

Winter hatched chicks are more apt to be female.
 
Someone told me that at class Saturday. I broke open a fertile and an infertile egg to show the difference and this person (that owns hens and roosters) said, "I thought you were going to show us by candling."
idunno.gif
 

Similar threads

Littledarlingfarm
Hatching button quail issues, how long before far gone
Replies
1
Views
335
alpacasandchicks78
alpacasandchicks78
R
    • Like
Slow hatching
Replies
5
Views
276
Ridgerunner
Ridgerunner
FatherFalcon
Chaos Hatching Technique
Replies
4
Views
721
Ridgerunner
Ridgerunner
A
    • Like
Optimum Egg Hatching For Coturnix Quail
Replies
4
Views
303
Nabiki
Nabiki
RoseHawke
RoseHawke's Hatching Journey
Replies
6
Views
242
RoseHawke
RoseHawke

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom