First time hatching & getting excited

[Want Less]

Santa came early for us. He was driving a big brown truck and dropped off our long awaited Brinsea 20 Advance this week...!

Since we'll be doing a little traveling here and there during the coming weeks, we plan to pick up our eggs and start them on Dec 31.

Hatching our own eggs will be a new adventure for us so I'm hunting around for good online resources for anything related to hatching chicks if any of you have any links to share (of course we already have BYC learning pages bookmarked).

I also have a few questions...

-- We have the auto-turner for our incubator. Aside from regularly adding water to keep the humidity level correct, how often should we opening the incubator and checking/handling the eggs? I read that the less the incubator is opened the better, but then I also read that opening & checking daily (and also needing to add water sometimes twice daily) is necessary. Whats the happy medium? How often are you opening yours for whatever reason?

-- We live in a drafty old cold farmhouse. Any tips from those in similar situations on keeping the incubator warm so its not overworking itself? (We have an insulation idea we may test before we get the eggs). Our house thermostat is set at 54. We wear sweaters...

-- How often should we be candling the eggs? And whats a good make-it-yourself candling method? (We will be hatching brahmas, ameraucanas and marans so we are dealing with 3 different egg colors. I guess the marans may be trickiest to candle?)


Any other thoughts, suggestions, ideas, resource links, etc are highly appreciated!

 

[KandiandJerry]

I keep my humidity level at 40% and the only time I open mine is on day 7,14, and 18 that is when I candle my eggs. the best and cheapest thing I found to use is one of those little led flashlights they work great.. try to keep your bator in a room that stays the same temp if you can when I have to ad water to mine I use a straw and put it in the hole on top I use hovabators and keep 3 full all the time..... good luck

 

[Mahonri]

If the house is drafty, you'll want to put it in a warm room or closet.

Get a Brinsea Spot check thermometer, my Brinsea like yours stop controlling heat after the third hatch.

I only candle on day 10 and day 18. Less handling = less problems.

I dry hatch. Humidity at 35% for the first 17 days, then I up it to 67% for lockdown.

When you set, 100s of us will be hatching for New Years.

Plan on joining us to hatch for Easter... it will be fun.

 

[KandiandJerry]

Good info.... I dont dry hatch I have the turbo fans in my bators but always hatching at 90% most of the time but basically have the same humidity as you even at lockdown I normally run around 67%..... never thought hatching would be such an addictive thing LOL!!! looking forward to the new years hatch!!!

 

[Want Less]

Thanks for all the info!

We are going to do an egg-less test run and experiment with insulating ideas. Right off, we are thinking we can invert a big plastic tote over the incubator and cover it with a blanket. We're going to monitor the internal & external temp of the incubator to see what it does, as well as watch the humidity. We'll adjust the tote to vent as needed.

Any thoughts on this idea?

It's not possible for us to warm just one room in our house without running our heat system 24/7 (VERY cost prohibitive). And since our house is 200 years old, we don't have closets so we're hoping this will help contain the heat a little better.

Hopefully by January we will have our new woodstove installed but we cant count on that until its done.