Getting ready for lockdown

[Artistickatt]

I have three of my six original eggs getting ready to go into lockdown. All three have lost the appropriate amount of weight all along, they show veins and movement.

As a last night as I was getting some of the last weights, I noticed that too are very difficult to candle anymore (I would expect that), but one is still way easier to candle and looks less dense, but there’s obvious chick movement. Seeing that I set them at the same time, what do I do? I know that they can stay in the incubator for 24 - 48 hours, but I’m not sure if that’ll be long enough to hatch the last one.

I would think that one would need to go possibly several days longer. Thoughts from the experienced hatchers.

 

[KsKingBee]

The porosity of the shell will dictate how much moisture is lost during the incubating process and can extend the timing if it is thicker. It could extend pipping by a few hours to a day or so. Sometimes the embryo can look like it is retarded but will still hatch along with the other eggs. Really, it is a wait-and-see scenario. There could be other factors as well as not all eggs are created equally.

 

[Artistickatt]

Thus being more luck than science. Makes sense. We have had higher than usual humidity here in Centeal Texas this month (we got 15 inches of rain here in one week). I had been trying to keep the humidity at 55% but this last week it kept drifting near 60%. The eggs are at exactly 15% weight loss as of today and I am preparing to lockdown (on schedule). On the site here, it says 60% for the hatch. My original intention was 65% based off of reading the books. Do I increase the humidity for hatch at this point? I have been trying to decide which is more important, the bump in humidity over the set humidity level or the overall humidity level at hatch versus set.

(I know so many just throw their eggs in with the fist number they see and have them hatch. I seem much more prone to anxiety about it and read 100 sources … and truly over the last two months your the only one I treat as WORD)

 

[KsKingBee]

We set our incubator at 45% and the hatcher at 60%. 65% should be fine since your eggs have lost the 15%.

 

[Artistickatt]

As of last night, the eggs had lost 16% but I have it set and am trying to dial in the humidity. If I ever do this again, I am going with a different incubator for this. I can see the flaws with this desktop system for sure. (I feel myself trending to sleeping in the room with it to manage it). When I added water to the second reservoir, it swung to 70%. Lockdown officially started at midnight, so I am just stuck waiting to loose the extra water in the trays to bring it down.

A treat though with the last weighing was that, I got complained at by two of the three eggs , a first. One of those was the egg I was worried about and candled looked more like others .

(One more question, I know I am so bad at that)

How do I handle the chicks to tame them without them imprinting on me?