Guide to hatching chicken eggs the easy way

quailboy02

In the Brooder
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If you have found this thread you are either a newby who needs help with hatching eggs or someone with experience who is looking for new methods so below I am going to tell you the easiest way to hatch chicken eggs on a low budget the super easy way please leave comment on this thread if you have any questions or changes that I can make to to thread thanks.


2. Make an incubator or buy one


An incubator is something that you either make or buy that is well maintained enough to hatch your eggs.
If you choose to make your own I would go to the homemade incubators section of byc if you want to buy one
I would say the hovabator or little giant is a good start I would go with the hovabator because I own one and it
is well maintained so if you have a low budget then I would say make one but if you have the money buy one i
think it is really worth the money that you spent.




2. Temps and humidity settings
You want your temps to be around 99.5 for chicken eggs but you can still have a decent hatch with 97 as your temp
and also with temps as high as 101 the worse thing you can do to ruin your hatch is be too strict with temps I learned this
the hard way so if it does not go lower than 97 or does not go higher than 101 do not worry about it


Humidity

for humidity their are two methods te traditional method and the dry method
the traditional method is to keep the humidity between 45-55 and the
dry method is to not care about humidity for the first 18 days of incubation
and increase it to 65-70 at the last 3 days of incubation you also have to keep
65-70 humidity for the traditional method aswell for the last three days of incubation
also for the dry method do not let the humidity go lower than 25%.


3. Hatch date and what the heck to do!!!!
chickens take 21 days to hatch turn the eggs 2-3 times each day on day 5 you can
candle them by putting a mini flashlight under them
to check for developement. on day 18 stop turning them or if you have an
auto turner take it out and put the eggs at the bottom of the incubator.


4.Hatch day!!!!
on day 21 the eggs will hatch you can not help them or open the incubator
once they are all hatched wait 24 hours then move them to a brooder a brooder
is a container that you keep the chicks in along with a light bulb and keep the temps
around 95 for the first week leave chicks in the brooder for 60 days congrats you did it.
 
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well, I got lucky. My brooder was my bath tub and when it was getting to small for them and they were escaping, I put them outside...yikes...they were only a month old at best! In my defense, it was August and warmer outside than inside...
 
This is my first hatch and I'm on day 13 in a still air homemade incubator. Sometimes the temp get to 102 for a short while and I have to vent the lid for a bit to lower it. I candled the eggs and they look great (had to toss out 2 last night because they had blood rings). During lockdown, what can I do if it gets that hot in there. I know I can shut off the light for a bit, but I don't want it to happen when I'm not home. Thanks!
 
What is the heat element in the incubator?
 
I have a 15 watt light bulb as the heat source (its a styrofoam cooler). If the temp in my house is 68-70 degrees (which is what we keep it at at night) the incubator stays about 99-100, but during the day the house has been getting up to 74 and that's when the incubator goes up a bit.
 
ok you can either turn the temp down in the house to about 69 which will still be like 70 because it is day time or you can get fans to make it cooler in the house or just unpluged the light bulb for awhile it is also ok if you open the incubator for 5 min or so during lockdown
 
It will be strange if I have to turn on the AC in the fall, but I may have to for a couple of days next week if I will be out of the house. I thought lockdown was absolutely no opening the incubator unless absolutely necessary, but I guess a mama hen isn't going to be on them for 3 days straight! Thank you so much for the advice!
 
It will be strange if I have to turn on the AC in the fall, but I may have to for a couple of days next week if I will be out of the house. I thought lockdown was absolutely no opening the incubator unless absolutely necessary, but I guess a mama hen isn't going to be on them for 3 days straight! Thank you so much for the advice!

Just to let you know, quail is quoting temps for circulated air incubators. your still air is different. Quail should not have made an outright statement for incubating. plus the dry method still requires you to keep the humidity above 25%
 

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