First staggered hatch! Help!

[ILOVELEGHORNS]

I have for a looong time always do staggered hatches in my incubator and have no probs. I have hatches nearly every day. The hatch rates are extreemly high for me. The three days you start lockdown, take the automatic turner out, keep those babies that will hatch, separated from the other eggs as much as possible(barrior) otherwise after they hatch, the babies will be knocking into all the other eggs, trying to walk, makeing a mess of them all over the incubator and causeing possible detrimental damage to the developing embryos. Also, hand turn the later hatching eggs. After you take the chicks out, i would recommend takeing the other eggs out, placeing them in a dark colored towel in a cooler, and thoroughly washing the incubator, then placeing the later hatching eggs back in. When i clean out my incubator, I have become quite fast, efficient and thorough, which prevents the eggs from cooling too much. Since I have a small number of hatchlings nearly every day, I do a quick wipedown of everything when I remove babies(after all eggs are removed), and every 3-4 days, the incubator gets sanitized. Its alot of work, but worth the effort. Staggered hatching IS perfectly ok if you know what you are doing or have the time. I have absolutely no problems.

 

[peepblessed]

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Thank you for this important info!

 

[Gypsy07]

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This sounds like really good advice. Like I said I've noticed that with staggered hatches my hatch rate always goes down with the second and third batches of chicks, which was okay for me as I was deliberately experimenting with it. If I was going to be running constant staggered hatches I'd definitely come up with some system of cleaning out my bator with each hatch. I'd been blaming it on rising levels of bacteria in the bator and also the fluctuations in humidity that the eggs were being exposed to. Can't do much about the humidity thing when you're doing all your eggs in one bator, but the bacteria thing is definitely something you (and me!) could take steps to improve.

Peepblessed: With your eggs, as there's only two different lots of them, a quick wipe round your bator and then a spray of incubator sanitiser might just be enough. Maybe ILOVELEGHORNS could advise you more on what would work best for you.

 

[peepblessed]

Thanks to all of you for your great advice! I also receive this advice today from the person I'm getting the eggs from. Some good thought here also!

First off, mark all of the new eggs with a Sharpie marker before adding them to the incubator. Then, move every egg to the floor for the hatch. Open the incubator and turn (more like "stir" around with your fingers) the younger eggs a couple times a day until the older eggs start hatching. Then don't bother them since the new chicks will move them around sufficiently.

How are you monitoring your humidity? I use cheapo digital thermometer/hydrometers from Wal-Mart. Check your humidity before and about 10 minutes or so after you turned. If you are losing too much moisture by turning, you may want to mist the hatching eggs with a little water spray bottle before closing the incubator each time.

OR if you do not want to open during the lock down, you can just rock the incubator from end to end by propping one end on a book, then moving the book to the other end 2-3 times a day. That might be safer.

 

[AlienChick]

Good luck!

Do let us know how your hatch goes!

 

[peepblessed]

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Thank you! Yes, I plan to document what I do as I know there are others out there wanting a safe plan. I set the second set of eggs last night. That was the easy part!