Auto turner vs turning by hand hatch success

[muddy75]

I'm curious, what did you mark them with? Mine are coming blank and I'd like to keep track of what goes where. I won't even know breed until hatching.

Thanks everyone! If I have to I'll hand turn. I work out of my home so I can set an alarm. If I end up doing that - I always like having a doomsday plan in place, call me paranoid - is there a best way to turn them? Like should I turn them 1/4th of the way, then the other 4th, etc? Or is it okay to flip from Side A to Side B? (I'd mark them, of course) I'm unsure how gentle/gradual the turning is.

Thanks again for putting up with all my questions. I'm excited!

It’s best to mark with a pencil, but I use a sharpie. x on 1 side, 0 on the other for turning purposes. these from meyer had breed code stamp but I label each egg using either #s or letters. I rearrange during each candling and at lockdown to prevent “cold spots” in the incubator from interrupting hatch rate. while not a perfect system, my chicken hatches have been 70+% and hoping to get my quail hatches up there too.

 

[Rose Quartz]

That's what I've been working on. It's tricky to get it right, especially where so little of a change can cause problems.



That's what I keep telling myself, but I like to be over prepared. With all my cat rescues something always goes wonky, so I'm a tad paranoid.




Can they actually move around like that? I would think that the weight would keep them from rolling.



For some reason I find that very funny. Mine are coming in bubble wrap (each egg individually) that are then wrapped in more padding before being stuffed into a very hard box. I told my sister I needed egg cartons to stick the eggs on while they rest. Luckily for me she *loves* baking. She's been making cakes, brownies, cookies, pies, etc. She's thrilled to have an excuse to make more sweets. I didn't know they were safe to put in the incubator. If they are I may end up using those.

Finding out my package was more than double the size I can hold was a bit of a shock. I feel calmer knowing it can be done, though. I live in a city where not a lot of people have chickens around me. I was a bit worried thinking I'd have to find someone to sit on the eggs.

I'm still trying to figure out the correct humidity for the little guys. I have the heat set right via two lizard temp gauges I borrowed from my gecko cage. One is off by 10 degrees, so I drew a little black line where it SHOULD be if things go right. The other one is what I need to test. My loving sister used up all our salt earlier...

I know this is off topic a bit, but I don't want to spam the forum with many different posts. Is it true that a one degree change in heat can kill the babies? just how exact do I need to be? And everyone says you have kind of figure out what humidity you need based on your area. Is that true? I'm not positive what level I'm aiming for. But I know how to change it higher/lower now.

Temperature wise it's better for it to be colder than hotter if youre getting fluxuations. 104F can kill them. That being said i did have a temp spike my firt time round up to 118 for a very short time, and still had chicks hatch. Too cold wil make the hatch daay later.
Too hot or to cold can cause defects that make a chick unable to live even if they manage to hatch though so it's best to keep it as close as possible to 99.5F

Humidity is based on your local humidity. As an example i live on the coast local humidity is rarely below 80%. 90% is normal. I run completely dry for the first 18 days at 10% -12% in the incubator and then fir hatch up it to 60% -65%

For someone who is more inland though, where it's not that humid they would run around 45% in incu for the first 18 days. And then go up to 60-65 for hatch

It's easier to correct for too dry than it is to correct for too wet. So test how much water you need to run at 45% and 65% before the eggs come and then run the first 7 days dry, look at your aircells and then you can decide if you need to add water.

 

[Acre4Me]

First of all: Good luck to you! How exciting to get some fertile eggs!

I’ve incubated quail eggs in a homemade incubator. I had to hand turn them. My incubator had height, so I used an egg carton (the open flat kind sized for quail eggs), double stacked since I had 50 eggs. This was placed at an approximate 45 degree angle. 2x per day I put top flat on bottom of stack, then rotated the stack 180 degrees, the back in incubator in same angled position. Since I had rotated the stack, they were turned. Since they were in egg flats, it was quick and simple. I only turned 2x per day bc I was told that was all they (quail eggs) needed. I got 33 live chicks, plus about 10 more embryos/babies that quite developing late or died before they fully hatched.

So, find out how often one needs to turn chicken eggs by hand, and it may not be as often as you think.

 

[Mosey2003]

Considering they're being shipped, and you have the time to be home and remember to turn them at least three times a day, I would put them all in and hand turn. Candle on day 10 and you should be able to pull any clears and blood rings and maybe be down to 6 anyway. After day 12 turning isn't as critical anyway.

 

[Tatuana]

Thanks everyone. I'll probably hand turn them for a little bit until I can find out which ones are good to keep. After this batch I'll have to do one with an auto turner to see the difference.

 

[aart]

Best of cLuck....keep us up dated here!

 

[Mimi13]

the other possibility is that you turn for the first 7-10 days and when you candle to remove the clears the remaining eggs may fit in the turner for the remaining time..
.. just a thought.

x2

 

[Shamo Hybrid]

I like to turn them 4-6 times a day..... I mark (x) (0) (-) on the eggs' shell and turn them 1/3 of the way every 6 hours or so, sometimes sooner sometimes later, depends if I'm busy or not. I remember reading if you turn them an odd number of times (3,5,7) in a day, that the egg will not sit on the same side every night and each will get their overnight stay? Something like that. But then again I'm not really onpoint with my egg turning schedule and really just turn them whenever I feel like they've been sitting on one side long enough. Hehehe. Really, I think turning them 3 times in a day should be sufficient.

 

[Tatuana]

Well it may not matter. My tracking for the eggs finally updated. They were gathered Sunday, shipped Monday, due to arrive Thursday (now Friday) They were shipped from Ohio to Utah. Tracking says they just arrived in Iowa. I'm not sure if they'll get here by the arrival date, or if they'll be too old/handled too roughly.

 

[aart]

Well it may not matter. My tracking for the eggs finally updated. They were gathered Sunday, shipped Monday, due to arrive Thursday (now Friday) They were shipped from Ohio to Utah. Tracking says they just arrived in Iowa. I'm not sure if they'll get here by the arrival date, or if they'll be too old/handled too roughly.

Another few days won't likely matter....handling is another story, no matter how long they were in transit it's crap shoot.