First timer - starting my first batch Sept 15

[cynthia12573]

Good morning everyone! 4 days along and we candled this morning to cull out the definately nots, since we have more eggs coming today! Saw sparks of life in all but 5, culled them. 3 stragglers from appearance, but left them with our fingers crossed. Lifted one of the plastic windows to get each egg so as not to disrupt the temp so much but it went straight back to temp quickly after candling 16 eggs. Trying to keep humidity right around 43 or so, where is everyone else hanging with humidity? My home runs very dry at around 20-25 here. Just wondering if maybe I am to low or high by others opinion since I am new at this styrofoam incubation.

 

[gladahmae]

I'm trying to stay out of my incubator more this time. I've also moved it from the basement to our bedroom closet, and put a humidifier in there. I'm having an easier time maintaining around 40% humidity there than in the basement where I was adding small amounts of water at least 2x a day to keep it in the mid-30s. Weird, huh? When we pulled the eggs out on Monday (had to put the new egg turner motor on) I did a quick candle on the first 8 to see what was going on in them.....it was day 5 for them. I'm pretty sure I had 2 bloodrings in there, and another egg has blue birthday candle wax on it, which makes it tough to see what's going on. I'm staying out of it until Sunday night, when it'll be day 11 for the BLRWs and day 9 for everything else. I'll candle and discard all 'clears' and blood rings/spots at that point and not go back in until day 18 for the BLRWs, and at that point we'll start lockdown.

I REALLY like candling though, so once I have eggs of my own to work with instead of shipped eggs, I'm sure I'll be peeking at eggs daily.

 

[seventreesfarm]

We've got humidity around mid 30s. It went up to high 40s for a few hours after I added water the first time, but settled back down. Mine is in a pantry that stays pretty steady temp if I keep the window shut.

 

[jennibos]

Hey Cynthia, I'm also cooking Belgian D'Uccles with some Polish Chamois and some Marans - French Wheaton missed Saturday, all in incubator from Sunday evening

 

[cchardwick]

Well I'm on my second day and my RCom 20 Pro is really boring. The temp is stuck at 99.5F and the humidity spot on at 45%. Hasn't moved a bit since I started!

 

[seventreesfarm]

Well I'm on my second day and my RCom 20 Pro is really boring. The temp is stuck at 99.5F and the humidity spot on at 45%. Hasn't moved a bit since I started!

Nice! I might have to take at look at one of these.

 

[cchardwick]

Actually....I take that back. I ran into a snag tonight. I've been struggling to get my software running on my Win XP computer so I installed it on my Win 7 laptop and plugged it into my incubator. Well the software worked but unfortunately it reset my cycle to day 21 and switched to a duck setting! I disconnected it from my computer and I had to move it over to 'Other Birds' and program it back to a 20 day cycle since I'm already at the end of day 1. No big loss though, the programming was pretty easy.

 

[clameramseyc]

Sept. 16 Placed approx. 40 eggs in an used Little Giant Incubator with turner, but no fan. I have far more chickens than I probably need who are producing more eggs currently than we use personally. I'm sure some of that will drop off as the days continue to get shorter and the weather gets cooler. But I currently have around 3 dozen chickens (various breeds) varying from 6-7 months up to 2 years old (these 2 year olds lay huge eggs, but just not as often). Anyhow a few hens have become broody over the last 5 months and have hatched a few - the first one surprised me as I didn't even know she was sitting on eggs as she had snuck off and built a nest in some hay bales - I didn't even know she was alive as I've lost some to dogs or other animals (more to our own pups probably than other animals unfortunately). She hatched 13 and seemed to be a very good mother for about 3 weeks then she let them go on their own and over half of them disappeared fairly quickly after she left them alone. Again dogs killed several of our hens including that mother about a week after she'd weaned them and I suspected a couple chicks, but I also think one of our cats was getting chick treats at night as one by one they were disappearing. I never caught her red handed, but did find she was sneaking into the coop early one evening when the chickens were beginning to settle down and when the door wasn't closed up - so I think she was finding one occasionally. Our cats are afraid of the adult chickens and won't mess with them and the chickens actually terrorize the cats if allowed and will steal their food. I think this was because they were all small kittens when we already had adult chickens, so they grew up afraid of them as they got pecked a few times when they got too close. But I suspect no cat can resist a young fuzzy chick given an opportunity to find it alone so I have to be more careful now to keep them out of the coop area or away when I see them near mom and small chicks. Anyhow, 2 other hens have hatched a few, but only a handful for one hen and only 1 chick that lived for another hen. So I got the bug to try hatching some on my own and found someone with an incubator on Craigslist that I bought and I've gathered eggs - some probably fresh, some probably a week or two old. This is my first time, so we'll see how it goes, I'm hoping I'll get several chicks out of it in 3 weeks. If so, I'll likely be keeping them for a few weeks or a couple months and then selling them at a local auction place that handles a lot of small animals as well as some larger livestock each week. I don't expect to make any real money off of them as chicks usually only sell for 50 cents or maybe a dollar for rare breeds, but if I could break even after the feed and cost taking them to the auction I'd be happy as that could satisfy my wife into maybe allowing me to try it again. The chickens annoy my wife as I allow them to free range so they get all over the yard and porch areas so I need to somehow get them a little more confined at least away from the house, but I enjoy seeing them and messing with them every morning and evening before/ after work feeding them a minimal amount of purchased feed, but mostly unsellable fruits and vegetables from a local source or other scraps.

 

[cynthia12573]

Jennibos, I have set Mottled and Porcelains! Today I added a variety of show Silkies also, 15 of those. We are hatching for 4H projects! Several years ago I had a very nice cabinet incubator that did all of the thinking, now without it and using a styrofoam incubator, I am learning there is a bit of work and care involved, and still stressing and holding your breath all along! It makes it more hands on for the girls though. We are awaiting the arrival of some Gold Laced Polish to add in also. I am very excited looking forward to having a bit of "springtime feeling" added to our winter months with the baby chicks!

 

[gladahmae]

Well, I just made myself a rather extensive spreadsheet for this batch. I'm resisting making one for BIL's eggs as well since I know that he won't use it, and will tease me about it.

The thing is, he's got a LOT of different kinds of eggs (all chicken, just a lot of diff breeds) while I only have 3.