Forgive me, BYCers, for I have sinned......

[Camelot Farms]

I am secretly known as the 'Rebel Hatcher'

I do not do lockdown
I candle whenever the mood strikes me
I dont even own one of those humidity thing-a-ma-jigs
I stagger hatches. 2 here, 6 there, 4 or 5 more
I help...alot
I move chicks to the brooder before they are fluffy
I dont always remember to roll my eggs


If you need to punish me, please do so by sending me more eggs with which to practice the official hatching rules on....

 

[drumstick diva]

UrbanfarmerKc - you found the cure for chicken OCD nobody is gonna candle 416 eggs, or wait up for that many pip and zips and anything else. I'm worried they may just lay down and die(the people not the chicks) too much brain system overload. I am guessing you don't name the chicks either.

 

[Liexicof15]

Yes, a larger incubator is the only cure. I have the mini advance, but I just had to order the Ova Easy 190 EX. Maybe this will help with my 'disorder'.

I'll let ya'll know.

 

[missred871]

I too have a confession to make..... much like you I cannot keep my hands out of the bator...... I am doing my first duck hatch as we speak I am on day 11.... I cannot stop candling.... LOL. It is sooo amazing seeing the little ducks wriggling around in the egg, swimming around all carefree.... soooo neato! I have showed my 4 year old daughter. She was amazed too. Quite the learning process. Easier to see in duck eggs than quail and chicken eggs I must say! when I had my quail in "Lockdown" I waited till they dried and took them out... I couldnt help myself.... they were trampling the other eggs and making a mess.... and they were just so darn pathetic lol. I have had to help 2 chickens out of the eggs before. I found it to be a learning experience, but I should also say that both of them were hen hatched..... not in the bator... so the shrink wrap was NOT my fault. Anywho, thought I'd add my confession to the list here.

 

[colowyo0809]

Quote:
ha! obviously you don't know some of us very well! i haven't started the 'bator addicition yet, but that's because I just haven't had the money yet. But, I have two styrofoam coolers I got off freecycle that I'm going to turn into bators and I just know we are going to be doing everything wrong *sigh*

I can honestly tell you though, 416 eggs is not alot to candle

I still say nothing compares to working a 76 hour shift at a gas station

 

[mothersin2ition]

Quote:
Hahahhaa welcome to HIC (Hatching Incorrectly Club)!!! I also have been staggering hatches, I also move chicks into the brooder before they are fluffy- in fact, usually the second they pop out of the shells

and I had to buy an auto turner because I couldnt seem to turn them when I was supposed to.


Now that being said.........I have 4/5 brand new baby silkies this morning!!!! 1 was fully grown but never pipped the inner membrane, but Im leaving it another few days (there are 5 other eggs in there that just went into lockdown yesterday anyway) in case he/she is a late bloomer.
Pics to be added tonight!!!!

 

[muddstopper]

To all of you that just cant leave well enough alone. If you feel you must open the incubator door to remove hatched chicks before all eggs have hatched. Prepare first before opening that door. Humidity is sure to escape and must be replaced quickly. Before you open the door. go get a pair of your biggest cotton socks and roll them up into a ball, Soak in warm water. Then turn off the incubator, open door, remove chicks quickly and replace with the warm damp roll of socks. Close incubaztor door and turn back on. The warm wet socks will help quicklly restore the temps as well as raise the humidity levels back up. I find that when I have a tray full of eggs that the first hatched crawl all over the other eggs and each other and like most of you, I just have to get them out of the bator. I find the wet socks routine helps prevent the remaining eggs from becomeing shrinkwrapped chicks. If my hatcher tray isnt overfull with eggs, (which it usually is), I try to just leave the chicks alone until all the eggs have hatched, so I only remove chicks when the tray is already crowded with eggs before any start hatching.

 

[elieugene6]

Wow, you all just made me feel so much better. I am working on my first hatch (well as an adult) with a homemade incubator. I rushed to put it together and it works wonderfully. Very little temp swing or humidity swing. I made my own egg holder/turner it only takes a second to turn. Well as things worked out, not the way they were supposed to of course. It is going to be a staggered hatch. I have a mini fridge that I want to convert into a incubator but wanted to take my time on it and make it perfect. So I have been looking to see if it is possible to stagger a hatch in one incubator. I know it isn't ideal but apparently it has been done. Now I can stop worrying and if the other one is done on time fine if it isn't well that will be fine too. The first set of eggs to go in will be in lockdown a week and a half to two weeks before the others. So if anyone has any other tips that might help me out that would be great. My humidity is kept between 30 and 40% I fill it to make it 40% and then wait until it goes below 30% to increase it again. Does that sound ok? or should I keep at 35% which wouldn't be too difficult as the humidity takes forever to go back down. Hubby is working on an auto turner for me so if that is done before lockdown time I will actually be able to do lockdown.

 

[Mishiveous]

I'm not totally convinced that lockdown is really all that important. In our ignorance we did the following:

We had 4 hens go broody at one time. In the past we have let a couple of hens hatch out their own chicks and it is so much easier than raising the orphan in a brooder. Mistake #1. Mistake #2-5: leaving all the broody hens with the eggs in the general population. Mistake #10-98: Not marking the eggs we left under the broody hens. Mistake #99-eleventy billion: not realizing chickens are idiots and can't remember which nest they JUST left 10 minutes ago.

We had the biggest mess you have ever seen. Chickens switching nests, chickens laying new eggs on top of old eggs, chickens sitting on giant tottering piles of eggs trying to cover them all. After a week we realized this was not going to work. We cleared out over 90 eggs and threw them all away. It was sad but we had no way of knowing how old they were or if they were still viable. Now for our brilliance....

WE LEFT ABOUT 20 EGGS FOR THE BROODY HENS! We are slow learners. Fast forward one week later and guess what? We have chickens switching nests, chickens laying new eggs on top of old eggs, chickens sitting on giant tottering piles of eggs trying to cover them all.

We buy an incubator with an auto egg turner. Obviously we aren't to be trusted. I go collect the first 41 eggs I find, the rest get thrown away ::sigh::

We can't stop turning any of the eggs because we don't know how old they are. We can't candle because most eggs are dark shelled and we are stupid anyway and don't know what we are looking for.

Day 3 we go look in the incubator and there is a fuzzy little chick sitting in an egg holder rocking back and forth. We high five and move him to our ghetto brooder next to the incubator. We go work on the pond. We come back in one hour and remove the poor little fried chick from under the blazing heat lamp. We raise the heat lamp about 2 feet and blame each other for killing our very first chick.

My husband was obsessed with the hatching eggs. He would spend hours staring through the little window. I never could see anything all that interesting in watching eggs rock back and forth but ::shrug:: He could not NOT mess with them. If any of them even thought about pipping, he yanked them out and placed them in CICU (Chick ICU). Of course they all got dried from sitting in the shoe box so he had to help a majority of them finish hatching. The lucky ones pipped while we were at work or asleep.

We did manage to successfully hatch 35/41 eggs over a 3 week period. Several of them rode the egg turner for quite a while before being removed from the 'bator. All of them survived and are very healthy. None of them seem to suffer from motion sickness.

Moral of the story: Chickens can survive a lot of our meddling. They can also survive us "helping". They can not survive a heat lamp with the wattage of 1000 blazing suns

 

[drumstick diva]

Mishevius My heart goes out to you, you aren't stupid. People learn from their mistakes and I bet many have had the same mishaps you did. Thank you for sharing a very touching story. If nothing else, it shows you have -stick- to- it- ness, you didn't let misfortune stop you. You really , really want and care about chickens. I am so glad you prevailed with all the little chick-lettes.

So happy for you