First hatch right now & question

[brandini73]

Today is day 21. We had 1 hatch on day 19 & 3 on day 20. They are all fine, dry & out in the brooder box. I have 6 eggs left in the bator & 1 is currently pipped. My question is, should I try to quickly remove the shells & poops from the already hatched chicks or leave them?

 

[ChickenCanoe]

leave em.
Try not to open the incubator. Did you do anything to raise the humidity when you pulled the other chicks out?
The one pipped is possibly shrink wrapped.

ETA
Apparently your temperature was high during incubation with 4 hatching 24-48 hours early.

 

[brandini73]

Thank you...that's what I was thinking, but couldn't find anything specifically to reassure me on that. I did add warm water at removal & the current pip just happened this morning. Our incubator has a thermostat & digital thermometer, so unless it's wrong (& it could be), the temp wasn't too high. My guess is the early birdies were the closest to the heat source in the tray or that somehow it's because we held eggs for a week before starting.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Older eggs will hatch later, not earlier. They'll hatch an hour late for each day held in pre-incubation storage.
1-2 days early is always high temperature. I keep a hatching clock to tell me how high or low the temperature was based on if the majority hatch early or late.

Thermometers are notoriously wrong. Most are only guaranteed to be accurate to ±2.0°F and they often don't meet that.

Either adjust the setting knowing the your current thermometers are off a bit or get something that's guaranteed to be accurate to under 1F.

Here's a couple good ones I have.

https://www.brinsea.com/p-394-spot-check-digital-incubator-thermometer.aspx

http://www.thermoworks.com/products/low_cost/rt301wa.html