I've heard so much on this topic and am still unsure as to what the proper process should be ? So here goes , when your eggs hit the 18th day and they say to turn the turner off , do you leave them in the turner ? or take them out of the turner and lay them on there side inside the incubator ? One guy claims that he leaves the turner on till they start coming out ?.One person said that they had a better hatch if they left them in the turner ( turned off of course ) with the pointy end down ? At the cost of some of the hatching eggs I want to give them the best chance that they can have !I have a batch of Barnveldor eggs due next week to hatch and I want them to have the best chance of breaking free . Any information would be greatly appreciated Thanks
You can leave them on the turner, but your turner will get messy when they hatch. I think if you want to leave them upright, you can put them into an egg carton with the pointy side down and leave them sitting still that way. This allows the unhatched eggs a little more safety from the hatched chicks playing kickball with them after hatching (as they are prone to do). It serves the same purpose as leaving them in the turner, but without the mess to the more expensive piece of equipment. I personally remove them from the turner and lay them on their sides. I don't like cleaning the turner and I fear the chicks getting a leg caught in the gaps between the racks and panicking and breaking a leg or something. They are super uncoordinated when born. I really wouldn't leave the turner turning during lockdown for several reasons, the best of which is that turning during lockdown can disorient a chick, making it more likely to pip in the wrong place. You also have to face the chance that a chick will pip and zip so quickly that you won't notice in time to turn off the turner (I had one go start to finish in less than an hour) and I cannot express how much they enjoy sticking their heads under the turning racks as the first thing they do in this world... I have nightmares about the turner slowly crushing heads. I don't know if it's even possible, but I never want to find out the hard way.
