April Hatch Thread--Come Join Us!

[CCWelch]

Day 12, candled for the first time and in spite of the 112 degree spike in temperature on the first day all of my eggs show veining and movement! I am so pleased! My incubator (an LG Still Air) stays between 100 and 102 degrees.

 

[chickydee64]

What kind of incubator do you have? I am wondering how to manage a staggered hatch with one incubator. I have eggs due may 5 and then some coming in a couple days that were supposed to be here last week. I asked them to delay shipping because of the storm, and the ones incubating now showed up 5 days early. I know I am a whiner, but now I don't know what to do. I have just a cheepo incubator to begin with. Would one of those even more cheep still air thingies work for hatching? I wonder....


KEEGAN. I think you had a wonderful hatch. I read someplace that toward the end of hatching it is harder to control temps because the eggs themselves are giving off so much more heat. I am hoping that the fact mine are supposed to hatch on a Monday will allow me more time over the weekend to keep watch and hold things steady. Heck, I might even have to call off that week to stay home and babysit that incubator. It will be an awefully busy week. I am not looking forward to it.

Hi, I have an LG also.it has done me well for about three years......just had to find the right settings and room to keep it in.
I have a second that I use as a hatcher.......works great.
I set eggs in the incubator on the same day every week.
Allows me to know exactly when lock out day is....gives me time to hatch, clean and sterilize.
Good luck

 

[chickydee64]

Oh good grief.meant lock down not lock out...............

 

[oesdog]

Day 19 and firmly in lockdown. - thing is we put the humidity monitor in the incubator early today - it finally read 57-58 and rising we noticed the temp was oging down then realised we got the lead stuck in the rim of the incubator

That fixed the temp went back to what it should be and has stayed there ever since - but when we went back to check the humidity monitor the darn battery has died! So we just have to cross our fingers and hope for the best. The trays in the bottom have been filled up with extra water as the instructions say. I am not convinced about doing the sponge thing. - You see last time something awful happened.
We had 18days of fluctuating temps and humidity in a fan incubator. We peaked at 104 and the eggs were really hot to handle!
When we went into lockdown nothing happened so we waited and after a good few days not sure but I think it was day 23 we did the float test thinking they were dead and dumped any eggs that didn't move, those that did were very energetic! So we were still hopefull.. When we egg topsied the ones that had not moved they were full of ganky green gunge and didn;t look like they had started to develop at all.
Still nothing from the other eggs even though there was deffinately movement in the eggs when float tested. ( Meanwhile our broody had hatched her 4 chicks that were due exactly the same day!! So we upped the humidity more with sponges - one chick piped at day 25 and tried to get out. We made a BIG mistake and left it to its own devises, in the morning it was dead and the membrain was white and stuck to it. I was sooooo upset that we didn;t help it.

Day 26 came and still nothing. We did another float test and now nothing moved? SO we left them back into the bator and thought we will leave it one more day and them give up - On day 27 we reluctently went to the incubator to toss the eggs. After all Bertha's new chicks were now a week old! When I went to toss the eggs there was movement in one of them and it had a hole in it. We got on to the BYC and looked up intervention. DH quickly got a "help" kit together and gently started to open the hole up and let the little beak out. There was blood so we wraped it up and put it back in the bator. After an hour nothing had happend so we got him out and started again. We got half way down his little body and he flopped out - he was stuck to the side of the egg with yolk sac so we left that piece of shell in with him. Within an hour he was up on his feet marching on the other eggs and squalking at them! We couldn;t believe he was a week late and so we decided to leave the other eggs for another day - The next day the bator was smelly and we knew the chicks in the other shells must be dead so we started to gather them up and thinking how sad it was that we got this tiny little Legbar chick all alone? We wondered how we could encourage Bertha to take him on because by now her chicks were very much bigger and stronger than he was even though they were all set at exactly the same time! I was about to toss the eggs when I turned one over and there was a zip started on the underside! We rushed to try to help! This chick looked dead - it was floppy inside the shell and there was little sign of life. DH did his trick and managed to get him out. The other chick wanted to "play" but this little one was barley alive. We rigged up a partition int he bator and put some straw in it and placed his little body on the top. We didn;t have much hope. We just knew he was alive because he was warm and his chest moved very slightly. He stayed like that for over 12 hrs not moving at all. - But within two days he was up on his feet and within a few more running round the brood box - that was a little Maran chick, Bertha was by this stage very settled with her chicks and she knew she didn;t want anymore!! Both chicks survived and made it to adulthood. - All the other eggs had fully formed dead chicks inside that were very wet???? So thats why I say I managed to cook them and drown them all at the same time!!!!! That is why I worry about this hatch and temps and humidity ! - Paranoid!!!!!! completely !!!!!!
OES

 

[wabbit1964]

Sorry OES Hoping for a better hatch for you this time.....

 

[oesdog]

Yeah I am too - but that was our first go and in all fareness we didn;t know what we were doing and I didn;t know about BYC at the time.
We found it on the Web when we were looking for how to help the babies! SO if we had not screwed it up we might never have found BYC!!! So

Here I am!!!!!

Oes

 

[Keggen]

What kind of incubator do you have? I am wondering how to manage a staggered hatch with one incubator. I have eggs due may 5 and then some coming in a couple days that were supposed to be here last week. I asked them to delay shipping because of the storm, and the ones incubating now showed up 5 days early. I know I am a whiner, but now I don't know what to do. I have just a cheepo incubator to begin with. Would one of those even more cheep still air thingies work for hatching? I wonder....


KEEGAN. I think you had a wonderful hatch. I read someplace that toward the end of hatching it is harder to control temps because the eggs themselves are giving off so much more heat. I am hoping that the fact mine are supposed to hatch on a Monday will allow me more time over the weekend to keep watch and hold things steady. Heck, I might even have to call off that week to stay home and babysit that incubator. It will be an awefully busy week. I am not looking forward to it.

Thanks, that is good to know for next time if I do this again. My incubator is temporarily a nursing station for one of my chicks so I have to hold off on getting more.

 

[Everlong9750]

What have you got your humidity set at ????
I am just checking before lockdown
Humidity has to be?????????
Temp has to stay at????????

I just need to verify so I don;t screw up and shrink wrap and drown at the sametime like I did last time????
I am supposed to pu them into Lockdown tonight. - But was wondering about leaving it till tomorrow morning??? Would that be ok as I am real tired and if I do it now I wont be able to monitor temp etc because I will fall asleep - first restbite night away from our disabled boy this month so am shattered now.

Oes - minor pre- lockdown panic!

Ok going to turn the eggs for the last time.

You've probably gotten much better answers then I could give you already, but to answer your question I have my humidity at 65-70% and my temp is 99.5˚-100˚
I've read to keep temps on the low end of the range to account for the increased body heat from hatched chicks.

I'm nervous too, it's my 2nd time hatching and I had pretty crummy results the 1st time so for my kids' sake (and the chickies) I am crossing all my fingers!

So far we have 4 pips and 2 rocking. One is cheeping away in there too, it pipped last night around 7pm. I hope it comes out soon!

 

[wabbit1964]

I am waiting for my 2nd one to hatch... it pipped sometime today is peeping... so far a few others have rocked but nothing as far as peeps and pips... just wish this one would hurry up and zip.. it is the one egg I had with detatched air cell. but I guess since it pipped (in the air cell area) than the wierd placed air cell won't be a big concern now??

 

[AusChook]

I think the membranes in my eggs are too dry. My eggs pipped 24 hours ago and some have made no progress and some have made little. I can see the membrane is looking very yellow. Humidity is up to 70% but I had a few issues in the first day of lockdown. And they pipped early. I did help one little chick who I could see was trying very hard. It had some membrane stuck to its wing which was sticking to the shell so it couldn't move. I picked that away (the membrane is still on its wing I just freed it from the shell) and I picked most of the shell away it hasn't been able to reach. It is almost out but I don't know what to do with the rest. One is half way zipped but I don't know how long to leave it before I assist.