4th Annual BYC NYD Hatch-a-long

[PerfectPoultry]

;( I lost my two breeding Japanese bantams last month. So upset! I'm Japanese bantamless!

 

[Brechin]

Super excited! Awaiting Basque, Olandsk Dwarf, BLRW, Silkies, Wheaten Marans, and maybe a few more TJ's since my current batch is 100% viable TJ's (only 5 eggs)

 

[Brechin]

OH! And some Lemon Blue bantam Cochins!! I have never done so many at once, anyone have a strategy for homing so many chicks at once? I can keep them all in the brooders for a few weeks but I just want to try my best to find people who want chicks in the winter. I am hoping that I have interesting enough breeds to find homes right away.

Just worried as I have only ever hatched for my own personal use and always had a friend wanting the few extras I had. Hope I did not bite off more than I could chew

 

[tadpole98]

Uh oh.. I ordered some more eggs and they haven't shipped yet!! It said they would ship YESTERDAY!!
I have a question now. Some silkies should get here by tomorrow can I just set those on Monday and the others on Tuesday or whenever they get here?
I will just count the silkies in the first chick after midnight contest.

 

[tadpole98]

OH! And some Lemon Blue bantam Cochins!! I have never done so many at once, anyone have a strategy for homing so many chicks at once? I can keep them all in the brooders for a few weeks but I just want to try my best to find people who want chicks in the winter. I am hoping that I have interesting enough breeds to find homes right away. 

Just worried as I have only ever hatched for my own personal use and always had a friend wanting the few extras I had. Hope I did not bite off more than I could chew 

Where are you located? Do you ship chicks? If you want to have some off your hands I might be willing to, you know, sacrifice some coop space for the lovelies.lol!
But then again if I have a really good hatch rate this time I don't think I could bc I just had 20 hatch today and yesterday then the 20 more! And I have a broody hen with 9 under her..

 

[MarineCorpFarmr]

Tuesday is the day we are setting, so you could hopefully set them all together

 

[coldupnorth]

Uh oh.. I ordered some more eggs and they haven't shipped yet!! It said they would ship YESTERDAY!!
I have a question now. Some silkies should get here by tomorrow can I just set those on Monday and the others on Tuesday or whenever they get here?
I will just count the silkies in the first chick after midnight contest.

The only ones that would count for the first chick contest are ones that you set on Tuesday, Dec. 11th at noon or later (your time zone). The others can count as part of the hatch-along, just not the first chick one. If you check the first page it talks about that and how to take pictures with a clock & such. Hope that all makes sense

 

[bnewns]

Ho do you incubator Duck eggs? Right now I have them at 72 humidity and 99 temp.

 

[cluck-cluck]

Sally Sunshine, great post with all that info there in one place!

His name is Tuesday and he is a beast isnt he lol , Im not positive how much he wieghs exactly becase he only goes to the vet when he is sick he avrages about 15 pounds I think , he is a big sweet heart and extreamly floofy and soft , him and my son have a sibling relation ship and actually pick on each other some lol

I said it before, will again, I LOVE your cat! LOL (Your boy looks adorable too!)

Still fine tuning diy cooler bator (like hr 18 of this)
I added 2 sealed quart jars of water to approx. the eggs
I've been tuning mine already a ... um... forgot but at least 3-4 days now. Up and down, I decided to keep it at the setting that's giving me 98.7 just before the light turns back on and 99.3 just as it turns off.

This (after also changing to 40watt bulb)
has brought the temp. down from a consistent 103, to a steady 101 for past 3hrs.
It seriously takes a long time and you'll want to have it going for a full 24 hours steady before setting the eggs. I think I have the same size cooler, I have one 40 watt bulb in it, an electric water heater lower thermostat, and only one hole open. I used perscription medicine bottles to insert in the holes. I drilled 1-1/2" diameter holes to insert the medicine bottles One in back to the left and one in front to the right. I drilled out the bottoms of the medicine bottles and use the caps as the "plug". I almost never open the front one.

I now unplugged the 4th, & currently final airhole to see if that does anything,
this air hole is actually the cooler drain plug, located in the bottom, & which I was planning to use to sneak water in if I need to re-wet a sponge after lock down (was gonna prep. some water inside a sealed container, all inside plastic ziplock ducktape sealed external so I can add water during lockdown w/OUT actually opening lid or otherwise changing anything but humidity)
Having so many holes unplugged might make the incubator more susceptible to the outside air? Maybe it'd be better to lower the thermostat dial. You do know there is a dial on the back that you can adjust right? Also, I have an aluminum wrapped cardboard "wall" between the eggs and the light bulb so the eggs closest to the light bulb won't be so much warmer. I also have 3 fans, one that blows next to the light bulb and against the "aluminum wrapped wall" (not sure it does much, LOL) and two from the top of the incubator to blow the heat back down on everything. I think one from the top would have been enough, but I had them so I used them ;P. I'm getting a 0.6 degree flux from this setup...

Anyway, due to the current heatwave outside my house has been running 5-3 degrees warmer than it would normally be in Dec
ie we haven't used the heat, when it becomes winter outdoors the house will be set to 65 & actually be a little cooler than that.
Soo, that fact that the bator is a tad too warm now, is not nec. bad b/c the temp. I expect for most of this hatch in my house might need
that extra bit. <Does that make sense to ppl ??
It might be true, but ... again, see if you can't hit the target better with only one plug open to lower the influence of the outside temp. Also, I find that if the outside temp suddenly drops really bad, a blanket covering the top of the cooler, sometimes half of it, sometimes the whole thing or anything in between, can really increase the temp inside by a lot, so it makes a good "adjustor" without opening up the 'bator.

So I can still add 1 more airhole , & put it where the pc fan will draw in directly, and may do that tomorrow but first I'm going to play w/ the dimmer switch to see if I can get down to steady 99 w/ just that alone.
I did that with my first incubator, has a ton of air holes, like yours, and found it just couldn't hold the temperature right, ended up plugging all the holes with pcs. of styrofoam and tape to make it work better. Humidity was also impossible to keep steady with so many holes.

_Almost there on temp, now to fix humidity, which was too high while it was raining outside yesterday, but too low today <insert facepalm here>
Now here I had lots of trouble especially with a lot of holes in my first incubator. With the one I have now, because I used the bottom of the bator as an open water tank. It either went dry too fast because I could only put a little water in there so the slope inside the bottom of the cooler only allowed half the surface to fill giving me good surface are at the cost of very little water, hence it evaporating too quickly and causing huge fluctuations in humidity. Or I put too much water in there, filling most if not all of the cooler bottom with water, and ending up with too high humidity. I liked that I could use the drain on the side to add water though, and getting it to pour into a container proved to be ... well, more than I was willing to put into it. I had some glass cubes, and covered most of the bottom of my incubator with them so I could just put water in as i did before but as long as it doesn't get as deep as the glass cubes and cover them (increasing the surface area of the water) it should be on the nose. When I get ready for lockdown, I'll pull almost all those glass blocks out and add water, which should give me a super high humidity. I can see this being a solution with heavy dishes (like a pyrex baking pan filled with marbles or rocks (to keep it from floating) It would be basically the same thing I did, cutting the surface area of the incubator.

At least I'm picking eggs up locally so I have that going in my favor I hope...
Yah, that should be a huge help. In regards to all you've said, I swear I've been there, done that, and hope you can find that balance. I really would close all those holes so the outside temp has less of an effect on your incubator conditions. We still need some air circulation, but one hole will be plenty. Opening the second hole if humidity can stay up for you on the last 3 days is good but not necessary. Hope all this info helps and doesn't frustrate you!


FeyRaine

Super excited! Awaiting Basque, Olandsk Dwarf, BLRW, Silkies, Wheaten Marans, and maybe a few more TJ's since my current batch is 100% viable TJ's (only 5 eggs)

TJ = Trader Joes? I love my leghorns from Trader Joes, LOL. Sweet! My calculations showed they'd be 19 weeks on NYD so they should lay then, LOL (I told them but they just gave me the "look" )

Oh, I forgot! I wanted to announce I got my eggs from BHep today. They seem pretty OK with only some of them having moving air bubbles but not disconnected too bad. I'm really Eggsited! Tomorrow or so, I should get some from another BYC member. Very happy, feels like the first time all over again! LOL

 

[Mahonri]

I think it's harder to keep up with this thread this year than it was last... that, or I'm getting old!!!

I'm still EXTREMELY tempted to get out the bator and put in some Trader Joe's eggs.

I've gone from 22 hens to 22 hens and 37 chicks now so NO NEED TO INCUBATE!!!!

I'm a recovering Hatch-a-holic and now I need to learn to stay away from feed stores!!!!