April Hatch Challenge....

Got a BO chick!!! yay go chickies go!
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Is that in your 'bator you built? I haven't started mine yet, still getting materials. I have a thermostat, now, still need sockets for light bulbs, and a fan. I'm in the sticks, long drive to town, I order a lot of stuff, instead. Or salvage it from something else.

That was for my fridge bator that I made from plans posted here on BYC. They were in the fridge for the first 18 days and then put into the HovaBator for hatch. My Silkies and Dark Brahmas are doing the same thing; just went into the Hova this morning as the Araucanas came out. Cleaned and disinfected in between. Man that was hectic.

The Porcelain D'Uccles are in my old drawer bator. I just candled them at 6 are developing normally, but 1 quit around day 3. That one came out. So since it started development, that's already negating my hatch percentage.
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Oh well. I'll just be happy if I get at least half to hatch.
 
That 8th egg that was hatching, seemed to taking a very long time, I finally decided to help the baby out. Guess what. It wasn't ready. The yolk was not absorbed. Nearly 2 days late. He's hanging in there, undisturbed in the 'bator, with the part of the shell the umbilcus is attached to, still attached. I'm hoping he survives. It also makes me think I may still have some more eggs hatch. I'm waiting a couple of days more. I have more eggs on the way to me, but by the time they're here, settled, and ready to set, this should all be over.

Man, what a ride this last few days has been. The LG was perfectly stable right up until this last bit, from day 18. That's when things got flaky. I think my temp needs to be set just a hair higher. 100F instead of 99.5F.
 
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I'm on day 18! I started with 12 Silkie eggs, but 3 were clear. Then my 2-year-old wanted to see if an egg had anything in it, so she cracked it on the table-yes, it did (day 14).
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Last night, I candled for the last time, and threw out my "questionable" egg-it started developing and died. It was about the size of a dime. How far along was it? So, now I have 7 eggs set to hatch on Friday.
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I tried the dry hatch method this time-I kept it around 40 for the first 18 days, now I raised it to 80, is that too high? This is only my second hatch, the first one, I got 2 live chicks. Both of them had to be helped-they pipped and then quit, so after 24 hours, I rescued them. The other 9 were fully developed, and died. The membranes were completly dry.
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Well right now my hatch is still going on, i found out at the last week that one side of my incubator was 96 degrees and the other side was 100 so i have half of my hatch late! how weird! but i have 4 buff orphingtons, and 2 marans right now with 2 more bo's pipd and 3 more marans pipd! it is very exciting!
 
Ok, can't remember the math on this challenge, but I started with 13. On day 10 candled with 4 not developed. So 9 went into incubation day.

I got 6 little babies hatched and peeping! I had one stop developing, one that died after pipping and one that did nothing. However, my cat unplugged my incubator while he was running around like an idiot this a.m.!!!!
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I don't know if the pipped egg and the other would have hatched if the temp hadn't dropped to 70.
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So, 13 in
9 to hatch
6 hatched and happy.
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Well, here are the results of our Easter Hatch. We Started with 63 that we thought were fertile but the actual number was 59:

20 White Faced Black Spanish
6 Standard Barred Rocks
3 White Wyandotte
11 Japanese (8 with short legs)
13 Black Cochin Frizzles

Grand Total of 53 fuzzy babies.

When I went through the eggs one last time I found that I had missed 4 eggs that were not fertile. Go figure these were dark brown eggs.
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That brought the total down to 59 that should have hatched. We had 1 that died sometime around day 18 and 4 that got into the air-sack but for whatever reason did not hatch.

If I’m doing this right, we had a 90% hatch rate out of our fertile eggs. WHooWhoo
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Our hatch rate has really risen since we switched from a LG Styrofoam incubator to an old 1202 Sportsman. Got to love it, set it and leave it until day 18 when the eggs need to be moved to the Hatcher. It may not be a high enough % to win, but we are all winners to be able to successfully hatch and raise any of our little fuzzy babies.
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