First time staggering a hatch>????

[20123001]

Well i am having 3 different kinds of chicken eggs shipped to me. i got 2 of the packages today and there is a note saying that they were layesd three days before shipping so... they are 6 days old. I want to put them in the incubator right away tommarow morning after they have set for the night. So my questions is should i do that or wait for saturday when i have them all of the eggs to put them in the incubator????? Thanks in advance!

 

[macdoogle]

I have no idea but I'm planning on staggering by a week. Some of my eggs were delayed by bad weather back East. Others have already arrived and I set them today. Hopefully someone else will have a better idea.

 

[jvls1942]

I staggar hatches all the time.. when I do, I try to have more than 3 days between hatches.. otherwise you are trying to remove chicks while the next batch is pipping.. that turns out terrible with lots of fatalities on the next hatch.

 

[stampntam]

Quote:
I am going to try my first staggered hatch as well and wondering what do you keep your humidity at on lockdown and what do you do about turning the eggs that are not ready for lockdown, I have a turner. Can I let the eggs on the turner that need to be turned and take the rails out and lay the ones that need to go on lockdown on bottom? Will the ones on the turners be okay when the other start to hatch?
thanks for your help?
I put eggs in bator on 2/6 and I have some expected to arrive today 2/11.

 

[Gypsy07]

Jvls makes a good point. If you're only staggering them by three days, there's a very good chance you'll be opening the bator to take out the first lot of chicks when the second lot are pipping, and that would risk shrink wrapping them. Though I've had to do that recently and found that as long as I kept humidity above 80% I didn't have any problems at all. But if you can be sure that your other eggs are going to arrive on Saturday I think I'd wait and set them all together.

I'm doing an ongoing staggered hatching experiment at the moment, and I'm in lockdown with my second lot of eggs right now. I don't know how to put up a link to my thread about it but if you search through my posts you'll see the title. Reading through it might give you some ideas - if only of things I'm doing totally wrong, LOL! But I got good advice from several people and I've written up my hatch so far.

 

[20123001]

Good luck to everyone out there trying this! im excited! and got all my eggs today so there will only be 12 or so hours difference beteween them! which is fine in my opinion!

 

[happyhens44]

I am doing my first staggered hatch too

I have 1 eggs on day 7, and 12 on day 2.