Adding additional eggs to incubator?

[Nicole01]

How terrible is it to add additional eggs to the incubator? They will be 5-6 days apart. I have 6 in there now that are doing well and I want to add 6 more. I'm going to add the additional 6 on the opposite end.

My incubator has an egg turner and a fan. I'm almost positive that the racks can come off one row at a time, so days 18-21 on the first set will be set on the opposite end from the egg turner. The turner moves very slowly, so I don't see an issue with the chicks getting hurt.

Or I can take the egg turner out and manually turn the eggs through the vent holes with a straw or other source.

What do you think? I'm not hatching at a high humidity(60-65% day 18-21), so I think this might work?

I bought pure Ameracauna eggs online and I'm picking up more pure Ameracauna eggs today. It's a one time opportunity with today's eggs. They are from a great bloodline.

 

[cochins1088]

It's not the best for them, but I have personally done it before with sucess. I had 5 broodys quit at the same time all with different stages of development. I put them all in the incubator knowing it could be disasterous but decided to try it anyways. I kept the humidity high, anytime one came close to hatching, I turned it up to 65%. Surprisingly, even the last 2 broodys that had high humidity throughout most of their development were able to hatch.

When you first add the new eggs it will take the incubator a while to get up to tempature. Thats ok, you just need to know that it will happen because it take time for the new eggs to get uup to 100 degrees. If you can take racks out of the turner, then it sounds like that would work. I personally don't own a turner so I hand turned my eggs twice a day, even though some were going into lockdown. That also didn't seem to affect the hatch at all. So it's your chioce, hand turn, or auto turn.

Yes, I would keep the humidity around 60 - 65% for the hatching. Some may not hatch, but many will. So it's your chioce, but if it really is a one time oppurtunity, I would probably go for it.

 

[Nicole01]

I could warm the eggs with a heating pad before adding to the incubator. I'll do this slowly, so it doesn't ruin the eggs. I won't put the eggs directly on the heating pad, but in a fish tank elevated a bit. In an egg carton.

I don't want the incubator temperature to change too much. I love the egg turner and the forced fan in the incubator. The eggs I ordered online are doing well so far, all 6.

 

[Ridgerunner]

They are yours. You can do what you wish with them. The normal recommendations are just guidelines, not absolute laws of nature. They are intended to improve your odds of success and make your life a little easier. There are no guarantees of success or guarantees of failure associated with most of the guidelines. A lot of us violate some of the guidelines and still usually have pretty good success. Some of that depends on which guidelines it is and some depends on how much you violate them.

Adding eggs late to create a staggered hatch complicates the process. It does not guarantee failure. It may cause some eggs not to hatch, but then again it may not. Those eggs can be pretty tough. And some people really like the drama the complications add.

It will not hurt the eggs already in there for the incubator temperature to drop a bit when you add new eggs. You can pre-warm them if you want but the core temperature of the eggs in there will not drop enough to cause any problems with that temporary drop in temperature. They should be at least room temperature so they don't have condensation problems when you put them in but a temporary temperature drop is a non-issue. Purely up to you how you want to handle that.

If you are going to have a staggered hatch, I'd suggest building a divider for the eggs that you can put in at lockdown for the first eggs. I don't know what your incubator looks like, but a simple way to do that may be to take some hardware cloth and bend it into a basket you can set over the early eggs when you take those turner rows out. The big thing that will do is to keep the newer eggs clean during hatch of the first eggs. It also keeps the first chicks away from the turner so there is less chance of it getting a leg caught. Not that getting a leg caught would happen each and every time to each and every chick, but it could possibly happen. But the big reason is cleanliness. I would not want bacteria getting into the unhatched eggs.

You can open the incubator during lockdown if you want. I have shrink-wrapped chicks doing that, but most of the time most of the eggs that have pipped don’t get shrink wrapped when i open it. It’s something that can happen, not necessarily something that will happen each and every time. If I have a need to open the incubator during lockdown, I evaluate the risk versus the potential benefit of opening it and make a decision.

I avoid opening the incubator during lockdown unless I have what I consider a good reason. I avoid staggered hatches if I can, but sometimes broodies can catch you in a situation. You do what you feel you need to do with the situation in front of you. In a perfect world, I would not plan a staggered hatch. But we don’t live in a perfect world. Make your decisions based on the information you currently have and you have done the best you can.

Good luck however you decide.

 

[Nicole01]

These eggs are beautiful! I'm one lucky and very happy person!!!