Building a new flock

[ScottKelly1974]

OK. I've bought a small incubator, and the eggs are developing. The instructions state to hatch the eggs in the incubator then move to a heat lamp cage. However, I may be running into a possible problem. The date the eggs were laid is recorded and if they are going to hatch at 21 days, I may be out of town that day. Also, I am expecting new fertile eggs to be laid and would like to have them in the incubator. The issue is, with eggs at different stages of development, will separating out the soon to hatch eggs and putting them under the baby chick lamp good, seeing they would be kept in that cage after they hatch?

My concern is if I leave them in the incubator and they hatch wile I am out of town, wouldn't the baby chicks be harmed by the eggs turner still turning the newer eggs. Again I don't have a big incubator so space is limited.

 

[HCB]

OK. I've bought a small incubator, and the eggs are developing. The instructions state to hatch the eggs in the incubator then move to a heat lamp cage. However, I may be running into a possible problem. The date the eggs were laid is recorded and if they are going to hatch at 21 days, I may be out of town that day. Also, I am expecting new fertile eggs to be laid and would like to have them in the incubator. The issue is, with eggs at different stages of development, will separating out the soon to hatch eggs and putting them under the baby chick lamp good, seeing they would be kept in that cage after they hatch?

My concern is if I leave them in the incubator and they hatch wile I am out of town, wouldn't the baby chicks be harmed by the eggs turner still turning the newer eggs. Again I don't have a big incubator so space is limited.

I'm no expert. These are my thoughts and feelings with only about 3 months of experience and around 127 hatched eggs.

Hatching the chicks in the incubator with an egg turner is a bit iffy; you raise a good point about the babies getting harmed by the motion of the turner. I have a Hova-bator 1588 (?) with a 1611 (?) turner and have found baby chicks in the works unharmed (so far). Our house burned on 12/11/17 and that's been very disrupting and I'm not on top of things like I was beforehand. Beforehand, I never had an egg hatch in the incubator, I had them hatch in a hatcher (cheap styrofoam cooler from Wal-mart and a temp controller and a light bulb).

My reading is that eggs do not need to be turned after day 14 so you should be fine to move the "about to hatch" eggs to the brooder IF the temperature is still correct for hatching the eggs (about 98.5F from my reading).

Also, you mention the date the eggs were hatched; this doesn't affect when the eggs will hatch. When the eggs were put into the incubator will affect when they will hatch. I set eggs on Tuesdays and Fridays and collect eggs everyday. That means that eggs will sit in a climate controlled space for up to 4 days before being put into the incubator. This seems like it may be in tune with what you're doing; you've got "waves" of eggs in the process of being taken from breakfast food to baby chicks. I simply write on the eggs a number with a pencil (not a marker just in case the ink solvent might harm the egg) and record the group in Excel so I know when which group needs to be candled or put into the hatcher.

This method of moving batches from the incubators (I now have two of the Hova-bators) to a dedicated hatcher has really improved my productivity; I candle at 7 days and discard failures, then candle again at the day they move to the hatcher, discarding failures. I sometimes move eggs to the hatcher a few days early if I need incubator space.

Once the babies are dried out, I move them to a dedicated brooder which is nothing but a translucent tub with a feeder, waterer, a heat lamp, and some bedding (it sounds way fancier than it is). I've had really good, but not perfect, results.

HTH.

--HC

 

[song of joy]

Wait until the first batch of eggs hatches before incubating the second batch. If you have a second batch in the incubator while the first batch is hatching, all of the hatching debris will contaminate the second batch of eggs.

The chicks should be OK in the incubator for up to 24 hours if necessary, so if you're only gone for 1 day, they should be OK.