Advice on hatching eggs in the incubator

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mmjc

mmjc

In the Brooder
6 Years
Apr 10, 2013
57
1
29
Woodstock, VA
Hello! I've had chickens for some time and hatched and raised a couple last year for the first time. I have a broody hen who ended up hatching the chick and then we took in indoors (in the brooder) to continue to raise. She's out with the rest of the flock now doing great! :) This year we decided to snatch the eggs and incubate and hatch them ourselves since our "used to be" broody hens are no longer. One question...I have an automatic egg turner and it's working great, but the eggs were laid at different times and therefore added to the bator at different times. Some are approaching hatching dates and need to not be turned anymore. What do I do with them? Our egg turner takes up almost the entire space in the bator? Any help would be great!
 
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from Ohio and God Bless!!! Try posting your question here https://www.backyardchickens.com/f/5/incubating-hatching-eggs Good luck and I hope every thing works out!
 
Well ideally you would use two incubators if the dates they were put in were different. Maybe you could first off stop randomly adding eggs. Then remove the turner and mark all eggs with an X on one side and an O on the other. Be sure to use a regular pencil for this. Turn all eggs manually from now until all hatch.Then section off a piece of the incubator to put the eggs the last 18 days. In this area you are going to want to put a wet rag or sponge to keep these eggs moister than the rest. The best thing to do is keep this area at 65% humidity and keep the other incubator parts at a max of 55% RH. When you go to turn the eggs in the non "lockdown" area make sure there are no pips. This is where things get complicated. If a chick has pipped and you open the incubator it could dry out and lead to its death. Just turn the eggs when there are no pips. This may cause you to have to skip a day. Not sure how bad that could be. I have a decent amount of incubating experience but not with this situation. Hopefully some one who has done this will help.
 
You have a bit of a challenge ahead of you. Just for future reference, it doesn’t matter that much when they are laid as long as you don’t store them too long. They don’t do any serious developing until you put them in the incubator. You need to start them all at the same time. It sure makes life easier. It avoids what we call a staggered hatch.

A bit more information that might help you. You really don’t have to turn them after 14 days. It doesn’t hurt to turn them for a few more days but you don’t absolutely have to.

I don’t know what your turner looks like. I can remove individual rows with mine by removing a cotter pin at the end. You might want to see if you can do that with yours. There are a couple of issues with leaving the turner in there. One is that it can get pretty messy and may be hard to clean. With mine, the motor part would be the only concern. The other is that it may be possible for the turner to injure a chick. It depends on what yours looks like of course, but maybe a chick could get a wing or foot caught in a tight corner or maybe the turner could actually crush a chick when it is moving.

I don’t know how far apart those eggs are in hatch date or how many you have, but maybe you could take a few rows out and put a barrier between the eggs ready to hatch and the late ones. Maybe a fence out of hardware cloth or some type of mesh box to put over the hatching eggs? Like I said, you have some challenges and I don’t have any great solutions for you.

Your other issue is humidity. You may need to raise the humidity when they pip to avoid shrink-wrapping them, but you don’t want your humidity too high for the late ones because they need to lose a certain amount of moisture before they hatch. I don’t know how you are handling humidity and I don’t know how far apart those eggs are in hatch date. I’d probably wait until a day before they are to hatch or until I saw a pip and raise it then.

You’ve got a rough situation and may not do real well with this hatch. Just try to muddle through as best you can and start them all at the same time next time. It does get easier.

Good luck!
 
Thank you all so much!! Your comments were very helpful! I definitely know for next time that I'll gather and store them (not too long) and then put them all in at the same time. I believe I can remove the rows from the turner, so I'm going to do that now! They all within a couple days of each other from hatching so there are no huge gaps, but still. Good point about the moisture levels and the different needs. I've definitely learned a lot so far and hope to do better next round! Just really hope all goes well with these little guys.
 

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