Ok, so here's my dilemma.
I have three incubators. One has duck eggs, one has chicken eggs and I have been moving whatever is getting ready to hatch into the third as a hatcher. I have been setting eggs on Mondays and Thursdays and so far my first two batches have worked out well. This time however I have duck eggs that were late, they are just now pipping and a few are hatched and drying. (I'd had a power outage so temps probably dropped some and slowed them down). Not a problem except suddenly Monday's chickens have decided to be early! I was going to put them in lockdown yesterday but had to delay it waiting these ducks out so thought surely today. Well, now some of the chicken eggs have external pips. So the dilemma: Do I leave the chicken eggs where they are at, which has a lot of other chicken eggs that need turning, in which case do I do more harm opening it up and turning or leaving it shut and not turning the others? Or do I move them to the other incubator thus only disturbing them once and having them deal with the ducklings which are not very gentle with the unhatched eggs? What would you do? I'm still very new at all this and am not sure where the greatest harm lays.
I have three incubators. One has duck eggs, one has chicken eggs and I have been moving whatever is getting ready to hatch into the third as a hatcher. I have been setting eggs on Mondays and Thursdays and so far my first two batches have worked out well. This time however I have duck eggs that were late, they are just now pipping and a few are hatched and drying. (I'd had a power outage so temps probably dropped some and slowed them down). Not a problem except suddenly Monday's chickens have decided to be early! I was going to put them in lockdown yesterday but had to delay it waiting these ducks out so thought surely today. Well, now some of the chicken eggs have external pips. So the dilemma: Do I leave the chicken eggs where they are at, which has a lot of other chicken eggs that need turning, in which case do I do more harm opening it up and turning or leaving it shut and not turning the others? Or do I move them to the other incubator thus only disturbing them once and having them deal with the ducklings which are not very gentle with the unhatched eggs? What would you do? I'm still very new at all this and am not sure where the greatest harm lays.
