🍃August Hatch-a-Long🍃

[CluckNDoodle]

Thoughts....

I am having trouble with the eggs in my vertical incubator. It is running the same temp and pretty much the same humidity as my horizontal turner incubator. I am using egg cartons with the sides cut down and bottoms cut out of each cup and turning them by hand 3 times a day (most days). This allows for me to let the new ones rest (staggered hatching) for up to a week while letting the others turn. I was using cardboard cartons, but occasionally they would absorb water from the trough below (wouldn't affect humidity much, but I got wondering about mold or bacteria growing on the cardboard), so I switched to the styrofoam. These are all shipped eggs. Most arrive with saddled air cells, extremely large air cells, or completely detached rolling air cells. (I put the ones with the better air cells in my horizontal turner incubator). I just candled 11 eggs that should be on day 14....and 3 were clear (darker Welsummer eggs) and 10 were quitters (looked about day 10. I did remove 1 egg a week ago that was starting to smell (incubator had a slight smell to it) - this is also when I switched out the egg cartons. Do you think that these eggs may have picked up something from the cardboard cartons to make them all quit like that or do you think that it is just damage to the embryo due to rough shipping hat caused them to quit? I had really good luck using the cardboard egg cartons the same way in my much smaller Janoel incubator...so just kind of stumped at the moment. I also candled my 4 day old Araucana eggs (air cells were on the better side) that are also in that incubator and I have 5 out of 7 viable eggs. I just removed the eggs temporarily and went and washed incubator just in case something is lurking in there.

It's really hard to say when dealing with shipped eggs. I received two shipments of hatching eggs from the same exact breeder, same flocks, but one week apart. The first batch had 50% viability and the second batch had 100% viability. Both had some visible damage from shipping, while the 1st batch definitely looked worse, but to me that also shows just how much of a toss up shipped hatching eggs are because I can't imagine circumstances for that particular flock changed all that much in one week.

 

[FortCluck]

We have a ton of Praying Mantis around our farm! I bought a Mantis hatching kit a couple years ago for my kids to do over the summer (we did painted ladies butterflies the 2 years before that and ladybugs the 2 years before that, so they wanted to do something different) and every year since we have seen more and more of them!

Where did you get them?

 

[FortCluck]

Well, dang, I hope so! A cow or horse isn't exactly something you can throw in the back of the car and not everybody has a trailer.

I need a trailer

 

[FortCluck]

Uh, I need those!

They were at TSC

 

[CluckNDoodle]

Nothing is more nerve wracking than finding the beak on a malpositioned chick. I don't care how many times I've done it. I hold my breath every time. lol

Good news is that one of the malpositions just finished hatching, I only have 2 more chicks to go and one looks like it will be ready soon!

 

[Willow2253]

They don’t bite... they only bite their mates not people. I’ve handle these a lot

Or bugs... I’m not a bug

A couple of us have bitten so we must be doing something wrong

 

[ShrekDawg]

I bought a ton of these funny shirts I went there for stuff for the chickens and farm

View attachment 2271995View attachment 2271996

I love these. Lmao

 

[kelseyk]

Where did you get them?

We got ours from insectlore.com. I think they are a pretty seasonable item as they do not have them on their site at the moment.

 

[kelseyk]

Nothing is more nerve wracking than finding the beak on a malpositioned chick. I don't care how many times I've done it. I hold my breath every time. lol

Good news is that one of the malpositions just finished hatching, I only have 2 more chicks to go and one looks like it will be ready soon!

I would love to learn how to do that! Do you just intervene if they don't hatch on hatch day, or how do you find that they are malpositioned? I often wonder how many I lose to malpositions.

 

[CluckNDoodle]

I would love to learn how to do that! Do you just intervene if they don't hatch on hatch day, or how do you find that they are malpositioned? I often wonder how many I lose to malpositions.

I typically gauge whether or not to assist by how the rest of the hatch is going. It's always better to wait and allow the chicks to hatch without intervention whenever possible. So if I most of the chicks have hatched and I have some stragglers I will check on them. Once the air cell is open is when you can tell if they are malpositioned. I will say that malpositions are the very hardest assist that there is. It's so easy to accidently Nick a blood vessel on the internal membrane while trying to find the beak.