Against the odds hatching thread (with pictures and questions)

[K0k0shka]

Vaccine update: it has been one week now since I vaccinated the chicks, and I’ve seen no side effects or problems. There was one suspected pasty butt, but when I washed it, I saw that it was just some dried up poop below the vent. The vent itself was fine. That chick (the screamer) just tends to have a dirty butt for some reason. It got re-pooped after I washed it... and now it’s walking around with poop on its underpants again At least it’s no longer screaming for no reason!

On a different note, the chicks enjoy climbing on me and I love it!

 

[adirondak5]

Vaccine update: it has been one week now since I vaccinated the chicks, and I’ve seen no side effects or problems. There was one suspected pasty butt, but when I washed it, I saw that it was just some dried up poop below the vent. The vent itself was fine. That chick (the screamer) just tends to have a dirty butt for some reason. It got re-pooped after I washed it... and now it’s walking around with poop on its underpants again At least it’s no longer screaming for no reason!

On a different note, the chicks enjoy climbing on me and I love it!

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They are growing fast

 

[aart]

No shortage of groceries there

 

[K0k0shka]

No shortage of groceries there

Towards the end of the day their crops feel like they’re gonna explode

 

[K0k0shka]

This morning suddenly all of them were trying to fly out, jumping on my arms, shoulders, scrambling for freedom, so I had to act fast. And I came up with a barrier that’s working great to keep them in while I clean! I hung a piece of HC on hooks. This way it’s not permanent and I can still take it down if I want to. I’m loving it!

 

[aart]

Getting crowded in there.
When will you move them out to the coop?

Just noticed your HN's are in the same bottle as the open waterer...might want another HN vessel.....just about anything will work, I have a couple articles showing some options.

 

[K0k0shka]

Getting crowded in there.
When will you move them out to the coop?

I'm still waiting for the 4 local chicks to be relocated to their permanent home. The owner has decided to give them to somebody else, and she's coordinating with the somebody else to come pick them up... hopefully they'll be gone soon. They are 1/4 of the population so they'll free up some space. The rest of them I'm planning to move out to the coop mid next week. The directions on the vaccine say to keep the chicks indoors for 2 weeks after the shot, to let them build up enough immunity before going outside and being exposed to the world. So I want to try to keep them in for another week, if they'll put up with it. I was planning on keeping them shut inside the coop for the first week after moving them though, so they'd get used to it and know that that's their home, so if they're not actually outside then maybe I can move them sooner? When I do, I'll move them with the brooder and everything, I'll just take the door of the brooder off so they can go explore the coop, but still have their safe familiar place to go back to.

Just noticed your HN's are in the same bottle as the open waterer...might want another HN vessel.....just about anything will work, I have a couple articles showing some options.

The nipples are not in use currently. I had used the other side of the same baby waterer to drill them into, to use it as a jar with a standard jar lid on, when they were younger. When I decided to switch them to an easier system, I just flipped the waterer and screwed its yellow dish on. The nipples are too high and there's no water at their level, so right now they're useless, I just kept them in so the container wouldn't leak when I flipped it upside down to fill it up When they go out to the coop and I try to transition them to nipples again, I'll use their big new forever waterer - a big heated bucket that comes with its own horizontal nipples.

 

[Eggscaping]

This is my first hatch, and my first hatching thread! It's sort of an experiment and the odds are stacked against me because:

1) I have no hatching experience,
2) most of my eggs have traveled very far - 2620 miles from CA to MA!
3) the breeder messed up my first order and had to re-send the remaining eggs, so the first batch had to sit around and age while I waited.... and
4) all I have is a finicky still air styrofoam incubator, which has required a lot of fiddling and experimentation to get it to work.

However, I spent all of last summer building this coop
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and my kids have been waiting for this moment for a year, so I'm committed to making it work! I've spent this past year reading about chickens, coops, incubation and everything, and educating myself, so I'm approaching this armed with knowledge and willing to problem-solve along the way. I want to document the process very well, first because I like this kind of thing and second, to help anybody else in my situation with information, lessons learned, and pictures.

The Incubator

I'm using a still air Little Giant incubator with an auto turner. I borrowed it from a local farm. I ran it empty for several days before I set the eggs, and found the lack of a fan to be a huge obstacle. The difference between the warmest and the coldest spot inside was 5 degrees! I had three different calibrated probe thermometers in three different parts of the incubator (I taped the probes to the tops of fake eggs, to get a more accurate reading since the recommendation is to measure at the top of the egg), and I moved them every couple of hours, so I could document the temperature everywhere. About half the slots were useless - either too hot or too cold, and the temperature in each slot was changing over time as well. I don't know how people pull it off with still air incubators! Somebody on BYC gave me the great idea of buying a mini handheld fan and sticking it in there (easier than hooking up a computer fan, and cheaper and faster than ordering a fan from the incubator manufacturer). I did, and that made all the difference!!! The temperature evened out completely throughout the entire incubator. The temperature was steady and even for 14 hours before I put the eggs in.

Here's my setup:
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I put a sheet of styrofoam (left over from packaging) underneath it and behind it for better insulation.

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I still have the 3 thermometers in there, because I want to know what's going on. One has its probe placed directly under the heating element, one as far away from it as possible, and one in the middle. Before I put the eggs in, all three read the same temperature. After I put them in (it's been 8 hours now) they never went back to reading the same, probably because the eggs are obstructing the air flow somewhat, but the difference between them isn't big enough to be a problem. The two probes closer to the heat read the same, and the one that's different is way out in the farthest corner. I color coded the probes and the displays so I know which is which. I cut flat probe-holding rectangles out of clear plastic to tape the probes to, so they can sit at the tops of the eggs, like the thermometer probe that comes with the incubator.
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Here's the little fan. Not a lot of room in there, it barely fits between the turner and the wall (note: the humidity reads low in this photo because I had the lid all the way open and lost some humidity. It's back up to 40% now).
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I taped all the thermometer cords together with the auto turner's cord, so they would fit snugly in the notch and stay together. Otherwise, every time I opened the lid, the cords would get separated and shift all over the place and out of the notch, and I'd lose time (and warmth and humidity) trying to line them up and tuck them back into the notch.
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Adding the fan's cord to that bundle made it too thick and the lid wouldn't close all the way, so I took out one of the red vent plugs and fed the fan's cord through there. I then taped over it to close it back up (the incubator has other, smaller vent holes that stay permanently open to let fresh air in, but you can open or close the bigger vent holes with the red plugs).
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Another great idea I found on BYC was for how to add water without opening the lid. I fed a piece of flexible fish tank piping through one of the permanent vent holes and down into the water tray. I add water as needed via a syringe:
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Before using it, I salt tested my hygrometer. I also tested all three thermometers against two high quality digital cooking thermometers and a medical thermometer, and all were accurate (within a fraction of a degree).


The Eggs

Today I set the eggs. There are 41 of them, and they come from three different sources (and only half of them are to be mine). The lady who let me borrow the farm incubator also gave me 19 eggs of hers to hatch for her. The cool green ones are hers Her eggs are the only ones not labeled in pencil, so I'll know which ones they are. At lockdown, I'll put a low cardboard barrier between her eggs and mine, so I can keep track of which chicks are mine and which are hers.

My eggs came from two family farms. One set is Silver Laced Barnevelders, and they shipped from Blue House Farm in NC. I ordered 4 eggs and she sent me 7. Saskia has been great - answers questions quickly over facebook messenger, gave me tips on egg storage etc. The eggs were packaged very well. Two had hairline cracks, but only visible when candled, and the air cells look good (some a bit jiggly, but none saddled or detached). Here's what her package looked like:
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The second set of eggs is all Orpingtons - Silver Laced, Partridge, and Lemon Cuckoo. They came from Papa's Poultry in CA. I ordered 8, and he sent me 15. He forgot the Lemons the first time around, but was very quick to respond and shipped them the same day I contacted him about it. Aside from that mess up, he was also quick to respond on facebook messenger, answered questions and was easy to work with. His eggs were also packaged well. No cracks, not even hairline cracks, but out of the 15 there were 2 saddled air cells and 3 completely detached air cells (but the poor things flew from coast to coast, so I guess that was to be expected). I'm glad he sent all the extras. He went even further in his packaging and wrote "fragile", "top" and arrows all over the boxes, and "Please call ASAP for pick up" and my phone number on top of the box. By comparison, Saskia at Blue House Farm only had a stamp that said "fragile"... Could've used some more labeling to make it obvious to the postal workers. Nobody called me for either of Papa's boxes though, despite the note on both boxes and me calling the post office beforehand to ask them to call me... Oh well. Here's what his boxes looked like (I only took pictures of one, because they looked the same).
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I let the eggs rest fat end up in the basement at around 60 degrees. Because of the delay with the messed up order, and waiting for my lifesaving fan to arrive, I had to set the eggs later than I'd wanted - on the 5th day after they were shipped (3rd day after the first box arrived). The night before I set them, I brought them upstairs so they could warm up to room temperature overnight. After I was sure the incubator was maintaining proper temperature, I opened the lid all the way up, waited for it to cool down some, and then set the eggs. Don't know if this is proper procedure, but I read about temperature shock, and wanted the eggs to warm up slower. The thermometers read 73 degrees when I closed the lid, and it took the incubator about an hour and a half to get back up to 100. So hopefully that was better on the eggs than sticking them straight into a hot incubator.

I also unplugged the auto turner and will keep it unplugged for the first week. I read that somewhere about shipped eggs, especially eggs with air cell issues.
(Edit: the different recommendations on how long to wait before turning shipped eggs have been confusing (I've read about 7 days, 5 days, 3 days, 1 day and right away, all on BYC!), but it seems like more people favor turning early. So I plugged the turner back in after 1 full day of no turning).

And here are all the beauties, finally cooking! It has now been 9 hours since they went in (yes I've been composing this post for a while...) and so far, so good. Temperature has been between 99 and 100 degrees, humidity at 40%. Lucky for them I'm home all day now, so I can check on them every 5 minutes!
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And here's what they should look like all grown up:
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I'm forever grateful to the BYC community for answering my questions leading up to this experiment, and for giving me so many great ideas that have ultimately saved the day. I'll keep updating this thread in case somebody else finds it helpful and can benefit from the pictures, ideas and information. And I will also ask questions as they come up, because... well, I've never done this before! Thanks for reading if you got this far!

I just wanted you to know that your post...and all the advice and shared information here helped me SO MUCH! My 8 shipped SFH eggs are now running happily around in the shower! We have had a bit of pasty butt, but caught it in time, and now the only worry is "who's a hen and who's a rooster?" That part will be hard, since I helped several of these little things hatch, so eating them will be very difficult. I'll try to rehome if someone actually wants a rooster, since SFH roosters are gloriously beautiful. Here are the "against the odds" babies:

 

[K0k0shka]

I just wanted you to know that your post...and all the advice and shared information here helped me SO MUCH! My 8 shipped SFH eggs are now running happily around in the shower! We have had a bit of pasty butt, but caught it in time, and now the only worry is "who's a hen and who's a rooster?" That part will be hard, since I helped several of these little things hatch, so eating them will be very difficult. I'll try to rehome if someone actually wants a rooster, since SFH roosters are gloriously beautiful. Here are the "against the odds" babies:

Aww this makes me so happy to hear! I’m glad I was able to help. Congrats on your adorable little fluffs! Fingers crossed for lots of girls.

 

[K0k0shka]

The 4 local chicks went to their permanent home today, so more room in the brooder for mine, yay! The new owner sent me pictures of her setup... Small and no perches at all... I told her these guys fly and love climbing and jumping and perching (more so than mine do, but the original owner of the eggs and the incubator told me the daddy was a climber, so no wonder). So, I’m glad that my brooder is less crowded and that I have 1/4 fewer pooping butts to clean up after, but I’m also a little sad for my foster babies’ downgrade.

Less crowded:

Two of my friendliest buddies: