I just wanted to share my amazing experience with my first hatch. I started out with 14 eggs from my own flock of 9 hens and one roo. All of the eggs were fertile and developing well and on day 12 I was candling and dropped one (#5) very sad and guilty felling as it was well formed and I had a very bad night because of it. I was able to move past the guilt and not dwell on it. Day 18 came and from all the research I had done I knew it was lockdown time so I filled the #2 reservoir in my geneses and shut the lid. On day 20 when we returned from a visit with my mom I noticed #1 had pipped and was so excited! My only worry was that it had started sleeting out and living in the south power outages are very common with winter weather. I had a back up plan just in case, we have a plug in in the minivan we would use it if we had to. Don't ya know at about 11pm with 5 inches of snow and ice on the ground the power goes out Ahhhhhhh! So we jump up and grab the incubator and as carefully as possible ran to the van and started it and pluged in the bator and NOTHING happened AHHHHHH! Im gonna lose it at this point! So as a last ditch effort my sweet husband says " do you think a hen will sit on them?" um no but its worth a try! so he ran to the chicken house and grabbed a hen and ran back in the house where I placed the eggs and by this point #1 that had hatched in the brooder with the hen and covered and waited. She of corse wanted very little to do with them and I just wanted to cry! By know its after 12 and I fell like there is no hope then the phone rings and its my mother in law asking if we would like to try and get to their house. I have 4 children and I didn't want to put anyone in danger on the insanely dangerous icy roads BUT my husband drives for a living and the baby chickens were going to die if we didn't do something quick so I said yes! So against my better judgment we put all the eggs back in the bator and loaded the family into the van and drove 7 miles, got stuck twice and had to be dug out once by the sheriffs dept. We made it and plugged the incubator back in got everything back to the right temp and humidity and that little #1 peep stopped being cold and went to sleep and I thought if #1 survives ill be satisfied I really didn't think after all that they had been through that any of the other eggs would hatch. Some of them even had gotten bumped around so much they had broken shells and everything ...............BUT do you know over the next 24 hours EVERY SINGLE EGG HATCHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! all are perfectly healthy and sweet as they can be!
