Curious - Why do we lockdown?

[Pascal PicklePants]

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I've looked into oxygen level meters, they are prohibitively expensive, but they do exist. I just allow as much ventilation as I possibly can while still maintaning even temps and humidity.

 

[BigDaddy'sGurl]

I'll be honest: depending on the size of my upcoming hatch depends on how rigid I go with the "don't open" rule. If I have a LOT of eggs in there, I open as they hatch so they don't trample the eggs. The last big hatch I had, the chicks rolled the eggs around a lot, and many unhatched chicks never hatched. When I "egg topsied" them, I found a great deal had pipped into blood vessels. I attribute this to possibly being because the eggs were rolled around and the chicks got disoriented in the shells. Also, if I am having a big hatch, the smell gets nauseating if I leave the babies in there with all the "organic matter" left over from the egg. What I tend to do is have a cup of lukewarm water standing by and I dribble this on some paper towels I always leave over the wire in the incubator before I close it back up and I haven't had any problems with shrink wrapping. While it's open, all of 30 seconds or less, I remove chick and egg shell and then immediately close back up.

 

[Tomski]

This is interesting - I'm fixin' to throw some eggs in the incubator for the first time. I've been doing A LOT of reading re/ incubation. I really didn't understand why we "lock down." I do understand the "shrink wrap" theory but ya'll are making a lot of sense. A chicken HAS to leave the nest to eat/poop...etc. So "quickies" into the bator to add water - collect babies/shells are okay?

 

[Pascal PicklePants]

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That depends on who you ask. It seems that most people on here will tell you no opening. I incubate in a spare bathroom so i can easily crank on the shower to hot, steam up the room and open the bator with little or no consequence.

 

[al6517]

I think the term lockdown was invented by those folks who own the small chinsey styrofoam incubators, where opening it to do something minor can cause disaster. I don't own one of those and I pay no attention what so ever to the term or the needless process called lockdown, I open mine up whenever I please and the humidity never drops more than 2-3% and then promptly returns within 2-3 minutes. I also hold no credance to the term shrink wrap, this is another styro incubator goofy word. It's really too bad they have to hatch in those god awful contraptions, but they do and hence all of 10,000 OMG hatching threads gone bad LOL.

AL

 

[CorgiHouse]

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Well, I'm certainly no expert and I don't know what is 'normal' for most hens.......but I do know that when my hen went broody this past summer and hatched chicks, when the chicks started hatching she did stay on her nest for 4 days without moving off. I agree with you I didn't think that was healthy, so on the second day there, and giving no indication she was planning on leaving, I put some food and water in the nest box with her. She did eat and drink a little while there. Then on the 4th day, she took her new chicks outside and had a feeding party.