Chicken addict :) please help.

[Chicken girl 15]

Well after keeping my original 21 alive for a year my husband bought me my first incubator. I'm so crazy excited as well as beyond inexperienced. Feel free to drop all your advice off on this thread, I need all the help I can get.

I'm setting 40 eggs in my little giant styrobator as soon as I'm finished typing this. There will be 30 brown eggs and 10 white. All are from the last 48 hours and look externally flawless. They have all sat for 12 hours pointy end down . Any other suggestions?

 

[QueenMisha]

Sounds like you've got all going well so I don't have any advice but hello from a fellow addict! Congrats on the incubator. Styrobators aren't my favorite but they make a good starting point. You'll soon find yourself wishing they had a real Hatchers Anonymous... I started with 6 hens and now have 140 birds... chicken math cannot be foiled!

It starts out with the plain hatchery laying hens... but then you see fancy hatching eggs on EBay... or someone on the local Craigslist has that rare breed you've always wanted... and suddenly you're overrun.

 

[Chicken girl 15]

Or (like a dumb dumb) you decide to host the local chickenstock and buy 6 of every breed available. I am the one from the breeding thread you responded to a few days ago. The lavender orpington boy with the astrolorp girls to make a big dual purpose.

Chicken math SUCKS!!! I figured 10 chickens, 2 for each kid. They would get eaten by a fox and oopse project over. Well dang wouldn't ya know!!! On the way home with those 10 we ordered 10 more. Then 2 boys. Then dang it I gotta save the lavender orpington from the soup pot. So after 2 losses we now have 21. Plus the 6 that a friend hatched from my eggs. Plus 40 in now cooking.

 

[Chicken girl 15]

Yay!!! 41 in the bator at hour 12 now!!!

 

[Chicken girl 15]

Candle question. As long as I see something at the top of the egg keep it? I just candle and all look to be ok, darkness in one spot. Keep them all until day 14 and candle again right?

 

[Chicken girl 15]

Day 7 is at its end and all eggs are developing well. 39 of 41 have very obvious veins. The other 2 are darker shells so I'm a bit unsure. They are half dark and half still shows light when candled.

 

[QueenMisha]

Or (like a dumb dumb) you decide to host the local chickenstock and buy 6 of every breed available. I am the one from the breeding thread you responded to a few days ago. The lavender orpington boy with the astrolorp girls to make a big dual purpose.

Chicken math SUCKS!!! I figured 10 chickens, 2 for each kid. They would get eaten by a fox and oopse project over. Well dang wouldn't ya know!!! On the way home with those 10 we ordered 10 more. Then 2 boys. Then dang it I gotta save the lavender orpington from the soup pot. So after 2 losses we now have 21. Plus the 6 that a friend hatched from my eggs. Plus 40 in now cooking.

Candle question. As long as I see something at the top of the egg keep it? I just candle and all look to be ok, darkness in one spot. Keep them all until day 14 and candle again right?

Ugh sorry for this terribly late response. I've had a busy week and then some.

That's how it works! It really gets bad when you get an incubator. It's so easy to make your own... When I put my incubators away at the end of the breeding season I actually try to hide them from myself, otherwise I end up hatching year round. As it is my incubators have been running non-stop since... oh, was it February this year? Maybe March. Now I've got hatches scheduled pretty much weekly and I'm putting another Brinsea Mini on order tonight. I'm expecting to hit 250-300 birds this year, which will be a new record for me (201 I think is the most I've ever had at one time).

As long as you see veins, keep it. Also, once it gets to 9-10 days, it should move around quite a bit. Anything with no (or blurry/unobvious) veins, development obviously far behind the others, and no movement is most likely dead.

 

[Chicken girl 15]

That's this morning. 39 look like that or better.

 

[QueenMisha]

That's this morning. 39 look like that or better.

Yep, that's the start of a little embryo! Looks like your incubator is doing a pretty good job.

 

[Chicken girl 15]

Woohoo!!! Cross your fingers for me.