egg movement day 17, lockdown a day early?

[thebulg]

we're halfway through day 17! woo!! it's just 5 chicken eggs. everything is great! temps have been running a weeeeeeee bit high all throughout. it's still air, so i try to keep it around 101 on top of the eggs but it has been solid at 102 and the very occasional 103. anyway.

i rotated everyone, and an egg started rocking! and then another did! i was thinking maybe i should just go into lockdown a day early to play it safe?

 

[Rod-T]

we're halfway through day 17! woo!! it's just 5 chicken eggs. everything is great! temps have been running a weeeeeeee bit high all throughout. it's still air, so i try to keep it around 101 on top of the eggs but it has been solid at 102 and the very occasional 103. anyway.

i rotated everyone, and an egg started rocking! and then another did! i was thinking maybe i should just go into lockdown a day early to play it safe?

Won't hurt anything go ahead.. I sometimes do..

 

[AmyLynn2374]

we're halfway through day 17! woo!! it's just 5 chicken eggs. everything is great! temps have been running a weeeeeeee bit high all throughout. it's still air, so i try to keep it around 101 on top of the eggs but it has been solid at 102 and the very occasional 103. anyway.

i rotated everyone, and an egg started rocking! and then another did! i was thinking maybe i should just go into lockdown a day early to play it safe?

If the air cells are the right size it won't hurt anything, but it's not unusual to see eggs rocking at day 17 as they are positioning themeselves head under wing and beak up in preparation for hatch. Many people see rocking day 17/18 and then nothing for a couple days when they start the pip.

 

[thebulg]

alright, brace yourself for a dumb question! i have been marking air cells with a pencil. and i've seen many of the charts that show where the cell should be by day 7, 14, and 18. but not all of my air sacs follow that pattern. some are more centered on the egg, some have that great slope toward one side and look just like the picture. is there no real way to know, other than just tracing the line and saying "it's still growing, hooray!" ?? is there a more scientific way to measure air cell growth to know that it's accurate? or is this just an art learned by experience?

 

[AmyLynn2374]

alright, brace yourself for a dumb question! i have been marking air cells with a pencil. and i've seen many of the charts that show where the cell should be by day 7, 14, and 18. but not all of my air sacs follow that pattern. some are more centered on the egg, some have that great slope toward one side and look just like the picture. is there no real way to know, other than just tracing the line and saying "it's still growing, hooray!" ?? is there a more scientific way to measure air cell growth to know that it's accurate? or is this just an art learned by experience?

To measure air cell growth is practice and when you get stuck put up a pic and ask for help. It's not exact, it's an average. The pictorials are more of a guide. If there is a significant difference you adjust. If you want to get into numbers you can weigh your egg as they are collected and then instead of judgeing air cells, weight them. An egg should loose 11-13% of it's weight from laying to lockdown. Divide that [11-12%] by 3 and you will get a weekly average of what the eggs should be loosing.

By the way- it wasn't a dumb question, and despite what people say, I've seen some

questions that make you go HMMMMM?? lol

Yes, some are slanted and some are more symmetrical. Makes it hard to judge sometimes.

 

[thebulg]

To measure air cell growth is practice and when you get stuck put up a pic and ask for help. It's not exact, it's an average. The pictorials are more of a guide. If there is a significant difference you adjust. If you want to get into numbers you can weigh your egg as they are collected and then instead of judgeing air cells, weight them. An egg should loose 11-13% of it's weight from laying to lockdown. Divide that [11-12%] by 3 and you will get a weekly average of what the eggs should be loosing.

By the way- it wasn't a dumb question, and despite what people say, I've seen some

questions that make you go HMMMMM?? lol

Yes, some are slanted and some are more symmetrical. Makes it hard to judge sometimes.

i can definitely say that these air cells are better than the ones from my last hatch. i realized way too late that my hygrometer was not accurate throughout the entire incubation, and comparing these cells to those, i can now tell that the first batch were too small. there was a great big jump of cell growth from day 12 to day 17 today, and even a pretty big growth from what i remember being on there 2 days ago. so i am going to guess that's probably good! if i compare the 5 eggs, 2 of them are either more centered or are just slightly smaller than the other 3, but are still bigger than the ones i had on my last set.

do you weigh them with a food scale? or a more of a science lab one? with such small hatches, that might be something i can try in the future, especially when the eggs are meaningful (like turkey eggs, holy moly those can get expensive).

and man am i glad you didn't think it was a dumb question. i see people say it all the time, check the air cells, and never once, anywhere, have i seen any nice clear cut guide on how to READ air cells or what is good and what is bad, because, i think you're right, it's pretty subjective!

 

[AmyLynn2374]

i can definitely say that these air cells are better than the ones from my last hatch. i realized way too late that my hygrometer was not accurate throughout the entire incubation, and comparing these cells to those, i can now tell that the first batch were too small. there was a great big jump of cell growth from day 12 to day 17 today, and even a pretty big growth from what i remember being on there 2 days ago. so i am going to guess that's probably good! if i compare the 5 eggs, 2 of them are either more centered or are just slightly smaller than the other 3, but are still bigger than the ones i had on my last set.

do you weigh them with a food scale? or a more of a science lab one? with such small hatches, that might be something i can try in the future, especially when the eggs are meaningful (like turkey eggs, holy moly those can get expensive).

and man am i glad you didn't think it was a dumb question. i see people say it all the time, check the air cells, and never once, anywhere, have i seen any nice clear cut guide on how to READ air cells or what is good and what is bad, because, i think you're right, it's pretty subjective!

I've never weighed, I always go by my air cells. I believe most use food scales for individual weight or I know some don't actually weigh individually, they weigh them as a clutch and average it out.

I actually prefer my air cells to be a tad bigger than the pictorial that I use.

 

[thebulg]

have you ever run into having an air cell that was too big?

 

[AmyLynn2374]

have you ever run into having an air cell that was too big?

I've had air cells that were growing to fast and had to up the humidity. And I've had a couple that were bigger than they needed to be. I've never had a significantly over large air cell before lockdown, but I have had air cells draw drown so far after lockdown that they ended up shrinkwrapping the chicks.

 

[mcmillinchicks]

I am new to raising chickens and I am still learning. We just hatched our first set of eggs because all of our hens went broody at once. I plan to start raising them and using an incubator for the next batch. Could someone explain to me what lockdown is? Thanks.