Advice for first-time setters: Share your best hatching tips! With poll :-)

[cluckitall]

Hi all! I'm sitting here running a temperature test on my mostly-completed homemade incubator. (Making sure everything works properly before I do final gluing/taping assembly.) So, in a moment of complete and bald-faced self-interest, I thought I'd come and ask a question of everyone here who's done this before:

What do you wish you'd known the first time you incubated eggs? What tricks and tips has experience taught you?

I'm going to be running my first test hatch with eggs from my current motley crew -- cuckoo marans roo and assorted rock hens. Should be a colorful bunch! Trying to make sure I have everything calibrated & working properly before setting eggs -- it's hard to be patient!!! So maybe I'll add a poll, just for fun

 

[Chica Lady]

There's no choice for "I'll let you know when they hatch." lol

Well, I'm on my first hatch now, in a bator that I made out of a fish tank. First eggs were set on 7/7. I was given some eggs on Saturday that were taken out from under the hens and was told I should have one hatch every day or two. I put them in with the first eggs. I have had two of the new batch hatch already. Still waiting until the 28th for the first batch to hatch. Also, I got my first REAL incubator today. An LG Still Air., with turner and egg shaped therm for $50. AND NO EGGS TO TEST IT WITH

 

[cluckitall]

Chica Lady, that's wonderful and I'm jealous!!! Right behind you, just as soon as I can

but no partially pre-brooded eggs for me, darn it!

And lol on the frustration!!! I can relate, in reverse -- I've had all these eggs, and no incubator!

Just installed the rods for my egg turner. Well, rocker, but it should work. With all the listing to and fro they're going to get, maybe I can teach them to be nautical chickens!

Which makes me wonder -- why on earth would long-voyage seafarers not have had a flock of chickens on board? Seems danged sensible to me!

 

[cluckitall]

I can't edit the poll. Pout.

Time to make the egg tray!

 

[Chica Lady]

Chica Lady, that's wonderful and I'm jealous!!! Right behind you, just as soon as I can

but no partially pre-brooded eggs for me, darn it!

And lol on the frustration!!! I can relate, in reverse -- I've had all these eggs, and no incubator!

Just installed the rods for my egg turner. Well, rocker, but it should work. With all the listing to and fro they're going to get, maybe I can teach them to be nautical chickens!

Which makes me wonder -- why on earth would long-voyage seafarers not have had a flock of chickens on board? Seems danged sensible to me!

Gotta love craigslist.......

 

[cluckitall]

That would be where I got my starter flock