gauging time of actual incubation with a hen, based on time of last egg

[susan threlkeld]

Does anyone have an idea of how long after a hen decides to go broody and stop laying eggs. I'm trying to guage how many days after taking the hens eggs you start the days of incubation (for a bator) I know when she started sitting but don't know when incubation started and when she laid her last egg, or even if it matters, like the staging of age with maturity of the eggs. It doesn't make a difference if she is sitting on them herself, but using the incubator you need to know because of the lock down.

 

[AlleysChicks]

Candle the eggs and look for the stage of development.

 

[susan threlkeld]

Candle the eggs and look for the stage of development.

They look very developed, and the air cell is about right I think. I just don't see any movement so far, based on what I see it should be 2 to 3 days. They fill up the egg with a quarter in. space at the top.

 

[AlleysChicks]

They will look dark and you may not see much movement because the further along they are the less room they have to move.

 

[WVduckchick]

You can also wait until the air cell "draws down" and loses its normally perfect round/oval shape. When you see that happen, crank up the humidity.

As long as your air cells grew well throughout, increasing humidity a day or two early won't hurt anything either.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

It is already too late to be worried about the development stages of your hen's current clutch of eggs. What will happen will happen, the mold has already been cast. Little or nothing that you can do now will make a positive impact on the outcome, and may well result in total failure.

Instead plan for your future hatches by getting a copy of Stromberg's "A Guide to Better Hatching"

https://www.strombergschickens.com/...mbergschickens.com/product/A-Guide-to-Better-

The best and only way to get a good hatch of healthy chicks is to gather the hen's eggs daily, store the eggs correctly, mark the eggs WHEN they are laid with date of lay and further mark the left flank of each egg with a big fat 0 or zero and each right flank with a big old X. Now these symbols do not mean a dang to the sitting hen or her chicks, but rather it is a simple way for us simple minded humans to keep track with what is going on with our hatching eggs. You can read more in the 100 page book "A Guide to Better Hatching" than I am able to relate here. ps: The price is right.

The path to wisdom is to first forget everything that you currently think that you know or that you may have ever head about a subject and then carefully study the subject up close with your aim being to divine the truth.

 

[susan threlkeld]

Thanks so much, very good information!