First incubation coming soon, I am nervous! :D

[VlkStinu]

So the eggs are in the new incubator - the switch took 7 minutes, so it was pretty brief. The new incubator is really great and very spacious. It will have a much more stable environment. I've put just a bit of water for the beginning as I already learned my lesson with the first incubator, but since this one is so well built and everything fits really well together, it was actually enough to raise the inside humidity to 60-61%. I will keep an eye on it and if needed, I will slightly lift the lid so it vents some of the humidity off. But I believe it will correct itself soon as there is really not that much water.

I quickly candled one of the eggs where I wasn't sure about the orientation (which part is actually "pointy") and realized I might have a slight difficulty with the candling later on - the shell is quite dark and thick. I managed to see the air bubble, but not sure if I will be able to see inside development on day 7. I think I will try and use my LED headlamp which is very strong and will probably shine through more effectively than the inbuilt candling LED on the incubator. Also, I was candling now during the day, so doing that in complete darkness at the night will be also much better. Anyways, I will give another update on day 7!

 

[peepdaddy]

Congratulations on the new incubator! A 7 minute interval to switch the eggs to the new incubator should not cause any problems. I use damp sponges to adjust my humidity (I cut the sponges with a pair of scissors to get the size that works best). In my incubators the temp will drop as the humidity rises so I keep an eye on that.
My eggs usually have an obvious pointed end and an obvious blunt end. Place the eggs with blunt end up when incubating. Sometimes I have an egg that is perfectly oval and I just take my best guess or I don't incubate those.
I candle my eggs at 10-12 days. The changes seem more discernible to me with the few extra days. Candle eggs upright from the pointed end and you'll see more of light (glow) at the pointed end (bottom) with a dark shadow towards the top (blunt end). To me it is insignificant if I dispose of infertile eggs at 12 days rather than 7 days.

 

[VlkStinu]

Congratulations on the new incubator! A 7 minute interval to switch the eggs to the new incubator should not cause any problems. I use damp sponges to adjust my humidity (I cut the sponges with a pair of scissors to get the size that works best). In my incubators the temp will drop as the humidity rises so I keep an eye on that.
My eggs usually have an obvious pointed end and an obvious blunt end. Place the eggs with blunt end up when incubating. Sometimes I have an egg that is perfectly oval and I just take my best guess or I don't incubate those.
I candle my eggs at 10-12 days. The changes seem more discernible to me with the few extra days. Candle eggs upright from the pointed end and you'll see more of light (glow) at the pointed end (bottom) with a dark shadow towards the top (blunt end). To me it is insignificant if I dispose of infertile eggs at 12 days rather than 7 days.

Thank you for your reply!
One of the hens is laying eggs with a shape that is sometimes inconclusive. But the important thing I found out is not to focus on which part is visually pointier, but rather place the egg on a table or palm of a hand, look from a bit of a distance and figure out which way the egg goes - that is which side is up and which is down. Some part of our brain can tell that right away - and I found out that in the case of these eggs, the pointier side is actually the bottom. The candling only confirmed that theory. So the thing is to focus on the orientation rather than the shape of the end of the egg, especially with these rather inconclusive egg shapes. I found that to be quite helpful. I was also thinking that I can always make a correction on the candling day and turn the egg that might be the other way around properly. But I believe all of them are oriented the right way now.

Thank you for that tip! So I will wait until day 10 for the first candling. No need to rush it I suppose. And as you say, the development will be much clearer on the 10th day than on the 7th.

 

[VlkStinu]

Congratulations on the new incubator! A 7 minute interval to switch the eggs to the new incubator should not cause any problems. I use damp sponges to adjust my humidity (I cut the sponges with a pair of scissors to get the size that works best). In my incubators the temp will drop as the humidity rises so I keep an eye on that.
My eggs usually have an obvious pointed end and an obvious blunt end. Place the eggs with blunt end up when incubating. Sometimes I have an egg that is perfectly oval and I just take my best guess or I don't incubate those.
I candle my eggs at 10-12 days. The changes seem more discernible to me with the few extra days. Candle eggs upright from the pointed end and you'll see more of light (glow) at the pointed end (bottom) with a dark shadow towards the top (blunt end). To me it is insignificant if I dispose of infertile eggs at 12 days rather than 7 days.

May I consult something with you? I am collecting eggs for the second batch of incubation and I am wondering - I've got two laying hens, each laying every second day. So there is one egg each day. I collected two eggs on the 9th of April - that was the only time they synchronized, after that, it went back to one egg per day. So I've got two eggs from the 9th of April and then another one on the 10th, another one on the 11th, and so on. I initially wanted to collect 10 eggs, which would mean setting them in the incubator on the 17th of April, which would make the first two oldest eggs 8 days old. However, I was playing with the idea of waiting two more days to get two more eggs, which would make these first two 10 days old. Do you think it is worth waiting for these two extra eggs and setting them all two days later or would you rather keep the already gathered eggs as fresh as possible and set them on the 17th as I initially planned?

Some of the eggs from the first batch were older - the first oldest one 12 days and then another one 10 days, another 9 days, another 8 days and the rest were younger than a week. I've set 12 eggs in total. This time the hens synchronized and they are both laying frequently, so I really want to set them as fresh as possible to increase the hatch rate. I am just not sure if 2 extra days is that big of a difference or not? I would have two extra very fresh eggs, but on the other hand, the oldest eggs would get older and so would some of the older ones as well. So it's a bit of a dilemma.

 

[VlkStinu]

Just a little update - one of my hens pleasantly surprised me today and laid an egg despite laying yesterday as well. So I think that might make the 2 extra days wait less attractive, as I will have 11 eggs by Sunday (6+5) instead of the 10 I initially expected. Or I could wait just 1 extra day and set them on Monday, as that will be the day when the other hen will be laying, so I would have 12 eggs, 6 eggs from each hen. What a struggle haha.

 

[peepdaddy]

I generally set my eggs as fresh as possible as I seem to have greater success that way. However, I have set eggs that are 2-3 weeks old and they do hatch. I know some folks have some success setting eggs that are over 3 weeks old. I think it would be ok for you to wait. It would probably also increase the hatch% of these older eggs if you are careful to store the eggs properly prior to setting.

 

[VlkStinu]

I generally set my eggs as fresh as possible as I seem to have greater success that way. However, I have set eggs that are 2-3 weeks old and they do hatch. I know some folks have some success setting eggs that are over 3 weeks old. I think it would be ok for you to wait. It would probably also increase the hatch% of these older eggs if you are careful to store the eggs properly prior to setting.

Thank you for your reply! So I will wait an extra day (or two, depending on whether the hen that laid today will lay tomorrow as well) for the additional egg and set them either on Monday or Tuesday. I am doing my best with the storage - I found a room with a relatively stable temperature of 19-20°C throughout the day and night, with higher humidity and I am turning them several times a day, also wrapping them so they retain as much moisture as possible. They are also very clean as I have pretty tight hygiene and clean the coop every day.

 

[VlkStinu]

Hi there, so I've done the candling on Sunday evening, which was essentially the 9th day. I managed to collect all the eggs by that day and decided to set them after the candling. It was the 8th day for the oldest eggs, so they are all very fresh and in the incubator at the moment.

What caught me by an unpleasant surprise though was the fact that all the eggs from the first batch, all of them, were absolutely void of any development. I think the eggs were just the way they were after being laid. There wasn't a single vein, just nothing. Only egg yolk and pure egg white from what I could see. Which on the 9th day of incubation is pretty clear. So I removed them from the incubator, feeling really bummed out. 12 beautiful eggs completely wasted (I suppose I have to throw them out). I don't know what happened - if it was all those things at the beginning that went wrong in the old incubator which killed the cells inside, so they couldn't even start developing. I am kinda hoping that is the case... I was posting pictures of the egg yolk in another thread before I started collecting eggs and many people confirmed they are fertile and that I can start collecting for incubation.

This time, I definitely want to do the candling sooner, just in case... I am really hoping this will not repeat, but just in case, I don't want the incubator to run for several days unnecessarily as it did with the first batch. What soonest candling day would you recommend? 7th day or can I do it sooner?

Everything went smoothly this time, the eggs are fresh, and the incubator is of high quality, the conditions inside stable and well regulated. The only thing that freaked me out yesterday was a drop in humidity while I was gone to visit my mom - I made sure there is enough water, leaving the incubator at 56% stable humidity in the noon and when I got back in the evening, couple minutes after arriving home, the low humidity alarm kicked in, which happens when the humidity reaches 33%. But I made a deduction that I got home just in time as the humidity was dropping rapidly (dropped by 7% further in just 3 minutes after I washed my hands right before I refilled the water), so it couldn't have been below 40% for more than 15 minutes and from the previous observations (once, during the first batch incubation, it dropped from 51% to 41% in just an hour when the water reserve was drying out), I am sure it was around 45%-50% in the last hour and most probably well above 50% for most of the day. I know I am being way too anxious about this and that this is nothing to worry about as it was a very brief drop and I was there just in time to remedy it right away, but seeing the first batch ruined, I got really jumpy about anything slightly off... Jumpier than I was before.

I just really hope the reason why the first batch didn't work out was because of the old incubator... It seems a bit strange that ALL the eggs were that way, but I guess it could happen?

 

[peepdaddy]

Hi there, so I've done the candling on Sunday evening, which was essentially the 9th day. I managed to collect all the eggs by that day and decided to set them after the candling. It was the 8th day for the oldest eggs, so they are all very fresh and in the incubator at the moment.

What caught me by an unpleasant surprise though was the fact that all the eggs from the first batch, all of them, were absolutely void of any development. I think the eggs were just the way they were after being laid. There wasn't a single vein, just nothing. Only egg yolk and pure egg white from what I could see. Which on the 9th day of incubation is pretty clear. So I removed them from the incubator, feeling really bummed out. 12 beautiful eggs completely wasted (I suppose I have to throw them out). I don't know what happened - if it was all those things at the beginning that went wrong in the old incubator which killed the cells inside, so they couldn't even start developing. I am kinda hoping that is the case... I was posting pictures of the egg yolk in another thread before I started collecting eggs and many people confirmed they are fertile and that I can start collecting for incubation.

This time, I definitely want to do the candling sooner, just in case... I am really hoping this will not repeat, but just in case, I don't want the incubator to run for several days unnecessarily as it did with the first batch. What soonest candling day would you recommend? 7th day or can I do it sooner?

Everything went smoothly this time, the eggs are fresh, and the incubator is of high quality, the conditions inside stable and well regulated. The only thing that freaked me out yesterday was a drop in humidity while I was gone to visit my mom - I made sure there is enough water, leaving the incubator at 56% stable humidity in the noon and when I got back in the evening, couple minutes after arriving home, the low humidity alarm kicked in, which happens when the humidity reaches 33%. But I made a deduction that I got home just in time as the humidity was dropping rapidly (dropped by 7% further in just 3 minutes after I washed my hands right before I refilled the water), so it couldn't have been below 40% for more than 15 minutes and from the previous observations (once, during the first batch incubation, it dropped from 51% to 41% in just an hour when the water reserve was drying out), I am sure it was around 45%-50% in the last hour and most probably well above 50% for most of the day. I know I am being way too anxious about this and that this is nothing to worry about as it was a very brief drop and I was there just in time to remedy it right away, but seeing the first batch ruined, I got really jumpy about anything slightly off... Jumpier than I was before.

I just really hope the reason why the first batch didn't work out was because of the old incubator... It seems a bit strange that ALL the eggs were that way, but I guess it could happen?

I agree, it does seem a bit strange. Do you feel confident that the eggs were fertile?
My understanding is that you should not candle the eggs prior to day 7 since the embryo is still very fragile and can be damaged easily. Maybe someone else here has more knowledge of this and will be able to give you a better answer.

 

[peepdaddy]

Have you broken any of you first batch to double check for any progress?