can some one tell me about incubating

[chickenmama109]

i want to incubate some eggs but i know nothing about incubating i want to incubate 3 or 4 eggs can some one tell me what you know about incubating




thanks

 

[R2elk]

i want to incubate some eggs but i know nothing about incubating i want to incubate 3 or 4 eggs can some one tell me what you know about incubating, thanks

Read Hatching Eggs 101 by @Sally Sunshine

 

[chickenmama109]

thanks

 

[chickenmama109]

can some one tell me how to hand turn the eggs

 

[Rubysword]

There are a few ways to do that. You could store the eggs in egg carton, big end up, and have a few 2x4s under one side, and 5 times a day switch which side they are under. Or you could keep them on their sides, mark one side with a pencil and turn them to the opposite side 5x a day. From what I've read, and limited experience, the first id more effective. What type of incubator do you have?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Yes, tell us a bit about your incubator. Make and model would be good. Main questions are is it forced air or still (thermal) air? How many eggs will it hold? How does it handle humidity? Are you collecting your own eggs for hatching or will you get the eggs from someone else? How they are handled and stored before incubation is important and that could depend on where you get them.

We all have our opinions on how to do many of these things. There are certain basics but you'll also get told a lot of things that are either just flat out inaccurate or really don't matter. It can be hard to tell the difference when you have no experience with it. My suggestions are first to read the instructions that come with the incubator. Then read about incubating under the "articles" tab at the top of this page. And read people's opinions like that article mentioned above.

I'll contribute to information overload by giving you some more reading. I'll include the troubleshooting articles because the best time to fix a problem is before it happens.

That A&M article is full of good information but in my opinion is way overkill on some things. What they are talking about are "ideal" conditions. We don't have ideal conditions, we have the conditions we deal with. For example they want you to store the eggs at 55 degrees F before incubation starts. I don't have any place that is 55 degrees so I store them at room temperature, somewhere between 70 and 80 degrees and do pretty well.

The closer you can hit ideal conditions the longer you can store eggs before incubation without them losing hatchability. Under perfect conditions they can easily last two weeks. Since I don't have perfect conditions I limit myself to one week max and usually get great hatches. Just do the best as you reasonably can and don't overstress over a lot of this. You'll probably do pretty well.

Reading all this will probably raise a lot of questions. So ask specific questions on here, like hand turning. You may get a lot of different opinions so be prepared for that, we all have our experiences and opinions. One of the main things to remember about all this is that a lot of people have had successful hatches their first time. Those eggs and developing chicks can be pretty tough, as long as you cover the basics and are reasonably close your chances of getting a good hatch the first time are pretty darn good, regardless of which incubator you use. But tell us which one so we can tell you what some oft hose basics are.

Texas A&M Incubation site
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/organic/files/2011/02/Lee-Cartwright-Incubating-and-hatching-eggs.pdf

Mississippi State Incubation Troubleshooting
http://extension.msstate.edu/content/trouble-shooting-failures-egg-incubation

Illinois Incubation troubleshooting
http://urbanext.illinois.edu/eggs/res24-00.html

 

[chickenmama109]

i have not got one yet i want to hatch up to 4 eggs and i think i will get a still air one and im going to hand roll them

 

[chickenmama109]

but i dont know anything about those things

 

[Rubysword]

So probably a foam one?

 

[chickenmama109]

im going to buy one off of amazon but dont know what i should get should i get one that the eggs stand up or lay down