First hatch - 7 out of 8!!!

Hi all, I'm so excited and I think the people around me are getting tired of hearing about my chickens.

I got my first hen about 6 weeks ago (unknown breed I got from the pound!). Then I bought an Araucana hen and rooster. The Araucana hen wasn't laying yet, but the other hen was. Once I got the sense that the eggs might be fertile, I collected eggs for about 10 days and kept them in a small fridge on the back porch. Because it's just used for drinks, I turned the temp as high as it would go on the fridge. Most of the time the thermometer read about 50 degrees.

Then we set the eggs. Funny thing is that eons ago, hubby had bought a used incubator as he was going to hatch quail eggs. Not for any good purpose, though. He hunts quail and was going to 'stock' our property. But, as these things sometimes go, the incubator sat untouched in the garage for a few years. It's a Georgia Quail Farm 1202 and has an automatic turner.

So we set it up in the extra bedroom and had it running for 24 hours prior to setting the eggs. I used two of those remote outdoor thermometers and put the outdoor sensors in the incubator. The reason I used two is, the one that I found that had an outdoor humidity sensor only had whole degrees in the temp readout. Then I found another one that had tenths of degrees. Plus with two, I had a backup on the temperature reading.

I had read an article on here about dry incubating, and it was fairly convincing. So I tried to maintain my humidity in the 40's for days 1-18, then I increased it to the high 50's/mid 60's during lockdown.

I only tried to candle one egg once, and couldn't see anything. My light was probably not strong enough. Other than that, the only times I opened the incubator were to add water. I didn't have alot of hope as I'd never done this before. Also, twice I let the humidity get too low (like 28%) when I ran out of water overnight. But apparently, it wasn't completely fateful.

Anyway, thanks to everyone on this site that provided me with the information I needed to complete this exciting adventure.

Heidi

PS The Araucana hen is now laying and I'll be setting some purebred eggs this week! Can't wait!!!