I am going to be tossing out what is left of my eggs today (day 23). I started with 24 eggs. One was cracked when they arrived. Two were early quitters. At day 18, four had no movement and did not hatch. Two had movement but were obviously not deveolped enough (lots of space and a very small embryo), and did not hatch. Fifteen had good movement and appeared to be developed well and ten of those hatched. So all done, I have 10 chicks in the brooder and have learned some great lessons from this hatch. I learned that when I do this again, I will be buying my own incubator that has a fan. I believe the still air bator that I used just had too much temperature variation and that caused my hatch to be stretched out over three days (the last chick hatched about 52 hrs after the first chick hatched). I also learned that I liked having the eggs in cartons when they hatched as I really think the eggs would have been kicked around too much by the ones that hatched first if they were just laid on the floor. I didn't like how it allowed the hatched chicks to climb on top of the cartons and be close to the heating element, however, even the ones that touched or rested their heads on the element don't appear burned at all. So with no further ado, here are my ten new buff orpington chicks!
Congrats!!! You did a great job, especially since you were worried about your temp spike. Beautiful babies! I think I'm going to hatch in an egg carton next time. My eggs got kicked around so much by the first 2 out.
