Diary & Notes ~ Air Cell Detatched SHIPPED Chicken Eggs for incubation and hatching

[Sally Sunshine]

i am having a rant after wandering into a thread of people throwing opinions like talk radio hosts - here goes:


I have decided, in my humble opinion, bad hatch rates come from 2 things. less than ideal eggs or less than ideal understanding of the process.

Doing a meta-analysis of hundreds of people on this site's hatches - including my own - I have made the following observations:

Get good eggs. Practice hatching on eggs from your hens or someone nearby. Know that they are fresh, unshaken and from robust chickens you have seen with your own eyes.

Unless you absolutely positively cannot live a day longer without a breed of chicken that is not available locally - dont buy shipped eggs, If you do, dont get all analytic about what you did right or wrong by hatching them without a baseline. Instead, hatch some control group eggs. Once you have established a good hatch rate with a local source, hatch the local eggs along side those precious ones. If you get a good hatch from the control group and a poor one from the ebay eggs then guess what? Its the eggs. Now if both batches are poor, its your technique.

Make a plan and stick to it. If you are going dry incubation then do it. If you are following the instructions of the incubator, do it. Make notes. Learn about your eggs development. I numbered all my first eggs and weighed them on day 0, 7, 1i0 and 18. I knew those eggs when they hatched. 18 went into lock down, 17 came out alive.

Get a strong LED flashlight - forget the incandescent plug in candler you bought from amazon. Look at them on day 7-10, 14 and 18. Learn what they should look like.


Wash your dirty little hands with soap an water for 2 minutes before you handle an egg. We set incubators at 99.5F - the same temp hospital labs use to see if you have bacteria in your wound blood or pee. They leave the specimen in for 3 days to see if it grows bugs. Our poor eggs are in 21 days - enough to create a biological weapon.

I also believe the term lockdown is like old days when the husband was in the way during birthing and told to go boil lots of water. Its invented to stop interfering - including the rolling of eggs. If you need to get a chick out of the bator to intervene or its been a staggered hatch, then get it out. There is not a magical force that suddenly shrink wraps an egg. We are making chickens - not soufles. Shrink wrapping is something that happens over time with low humidity in a pipped egg.

Finally, get advice from people with more than opinions. Use the resources on this site that are brilliant. Sally Sunshine and Sumi on https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/704328/diary-notes-air-cell-detatched-shipped-eggs are amazing. Sally has stayed up all night helping people assist their one surviving chick out of the egg. On that thread and many others, there are heroes of BYC. Get to know them. Get to know who you can ask for advice, get to know your incubator, get to know your eggs and finally get to know when to mess with them and when to leave them alone.

Good luck

BTW Sally - you really are an amazing woman. May God bless you for all your generosity here.

OZ ~ OH ! I am always drawn to your words and then a giggle and now you even made me tear up with such fullness!! I am so very Blessed already!
Thank you for such kind words!

Its not often one gets to hear that, if ever!! <3

You summed the process up a good one, biological weapon, awesome analagy!

 

[ozexpat]

OZ ~ OH ! I am always drawn to your words and then a giggle and now you even made me tear up with such fullness!! I am so very Blessed already!
Thank you for such kind words!

Its not often one gets to hear that, if ever!! <3

You summed the process up a good one, biological weapon, awesome analagy!

When someone complimented my writing in my thread and suggested I write more - I said I find it easy to tell stories that I have experienced. I am not good at fiction. Its easy to write things I dont make up.

Thanks again.

 

[sumi]

Quote: Get her a buddy or give her even more attention. I raised a lone chick once. He drove me crackers wanting attention and cuddles all the time, but he grew into the most amazing rooster. It's a pain, but it's worth it!

 

[sumi]

My broody hen hatched her first chick!!!!

Congrats!!!

 

[sumi]

Ok, I figured everyone could do with not turning for a half day before Lockdown but I wanted to be sure no one saw any flaws in my setup before L-Day. I can see all my eggs from the two windows. Side A has all the best chance eggs and Side B (with the wire cage) has all the solid iffies and wildcard eggs. I had to get country creative with the seperation cage in the end. I never got a chance to go out so it's chicken wire with duct tape on all the edges to get rid of sharp points. I also lysoled the heck out of it since all the components came from the garage. It was a pain too, I made it about half an inch too tall and had to squish it into a wider shape to stop it from touching the element or fan components. Not to mention layering the tape so that no sticky spots stayed exposed.

Am I missing anything? Does anyone see anything they think I should change?

Looks O.K. to me, but the chicks are going to crawl through those holes. They can get through very small spaces, so keep an eye on them.

 

[sumi]

IT'S DONE!!!




https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/dy-no-mite-incubator

 

[sumi]

Quote:

 

[sumi]

i am having a rant after wandering into a thread of people throwing opinions like talk radio hosts - here goes:


I have decided, in my humble opinion, bad hatch rates come from 2 things. less than ideal eggs or less than ideal understanding of the process.

Doing a meta-analysis of hundreds of people on this site's hatches - including my own - I have made the following observations:

Get good eggs. Practice hatching on eggs from your hens or someone nearby. Know that they are fresh, unshaken and from robust chickens you have seen with your own eyes.

Unless you absolutely positively cannot live a day longer without a breed of chicken that is not available locally - dont buy shipped eggs, If you do, dont get all analytic about what you did right or wrong by hatching them without a baseline. Instead, hatch some control group eggs. Once you have established a good hatch rate with a local source, hatch the local eggs along side those precious ones. If you get a good hatch from the control group and a poor one from the ebay eggs then guess what? Its the eggs. Now if both batches are poor, its your technique.

Make a plan and stick to it. If you are going dry incubation then do it. If you are following the instructions of the incubator, do it. Make notes. Learn about your eggs development. I numbered all my first eggs and weighed them on day 0, 7, 1i0 and 18. I knew those eggs when they hatched. 18 went into lock down, 17 came out alive.

Get a strong LED flashlight - forget the incandescent plug in candler you bought from amazon. Look at them on day 7-10, 14 and 18. Learn what they should look like.


Wash your dirty little hands with soap an water for 2 minutes before you handle an egg. We set incubators at 99.5F - the same temp hospital labs use to see if you have bacteria in your wound blood or pee. They leave the specimen in for 3 days to see if it grows bugs. Our poor eggs are in 21 days - enough to create a biological weapon.

I also believe the term lockdown is like old days when the husband was in the way during birthing and told to go boil lots of water. Its invented to stop interfering - including the rolling of eggs. If you need to get a chick out of the bator to intervene or its been a staggered hatch, then get it out. There is not a magical force that suddenly shrink wraps an egg. We are making chickens - not soufles. Shrink wrapping is something that happens over time with low humidity in a pipped egg.

Finally, get advice from people with more than opinions. Use the resources on this site that are brilliant. Sally Sunshine and Sumi on https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/704328/diary-notes-air-cell-detatched-shipped-eggs are amazing. Sally has stayed up all night helping people assist their one surviving chick out of the egg. On that thread and many others, there are heroes of BYC. Get to know them. Get to know who you can ask for advice, get to know your incubator, get to know your eggs and finally get to know when to mess with them and when to leave them alone.

Good luck

BTW Sally - you really are an amazing woman. May God bless you for all your generosity here.

Very well said, Oz!

And thank you

 

[sumi]

Quote: Sally, you are wonderful! You inspire me endlessly

You just keep going, in spite of everything and you never, ever let me down when I ask you for help.

 

[sumi]

Hi all! HELP! Need some advice! Incubating shipped silkie eggs...day 11. Nice veining and movement in all. Almost all have large saddle or partial saddle air cells. I have kept them upright and only started turning at day 7. I think the humidity was high the first week 60-65

(didn't have a hygrometer just followed Brinseas directions) Have a hygro now and have been running about 40 for the past few days. My question is should I increase or decrease the humidity because of the already large air cells? Or will it make no difference? Thanks so much for any input!!!

I've replied to your thread, but I'll post it here also. If the air sac is too large, increase the humidity. Here's an excellent article on humidity that explains it very well:

http://www.brinsea.com/customerservice/humidity.html

I have a Brinsea incubator, but I refused to set a single egg before I had a hygrometer in there. I'm actually surprised that the 'bator came without one! Humidity can make or break a hatch! So good idea, getting a hygrometer

Brinsea makes great incubators, but they don't know that the conditions in our houses are...