Hatch-ALong - Setting first eggs 4/5, hatch day 4/26. Anyone want to join me?

[TXTiffany]

I would love to join this thread. I have 6 Silkie eggs in the bator as I am typing this. I set them on 4/2, and I am hoping for a good hatch on 4/23.

I did candle them today ( I couldn't wait

) , day 8. All of them have nice veins, and I could also see the eye as well as movement.

 

[Pancholoco]

I would love to join this thread. I have 6 Silkie eggs in the bator as I am typing this. I set them on 4/2, and I am hoping for a good hatch on 4/23.

I did candle them today ( I couldn't wait

) , day 8. All of them have nice veins, and I could also see the eye as well as movement.

...Mine are due on 4/22

 

[TXTiffany]

oh you are just one day behind me. Do you have silkie eggs as well?

 

[Pancholoco]

oh you are just one day behind me. Do you have silkie eggs as well?

No, I don't. I have 8 bantam english chocolate orpingtons and 4 Giro eggs(these aren't mine)

 

[SmittenChicken]

Well, I couldn't resist. I'm planning to candle all my eggs tonight (day 8) but last night I spent a little time trying to get decent pictures of a freshly laid egg with my candler for practice. Of course this led to peeking at just one egg from the incubator, and then two more (so I could check one egg from each flock, naturally.)
So I'm not so good with self control. But I have at least 3 eggs developing in there! I'll check the other 38 tonight...

My photos were all horribly blurry, good thing we had a practice run! Hopefully I'll get some good ones tonight.

This is a picture my sister got of a RIR egg from my friend's flock, fertilized by the EE rooster that my broody hatched last fall:

 

[foxflower]

Hello, I'd like to join in! I set 18 shipped eggs in a Binsea Eco w/ autoturn cradle on 4/5 but just found this thread. The eggs are lavender ameraucanas, blue cochins, and welsummers. The first year I hatched, I had awesome rates, even on shipped eggs. The second year, did okay on my own eggs but nothing on shipped eggs. I had a bunch of broodies by then so I didn't hatch much. Last year, practically nothing, just 2 eggs from one 24 egg set of shipped eggs and few of my own. So this year I sterilized really good and calibrated the hygrometer. I didn't calibrate the thermometer because I didn't know how. I may take it out and do it when I can find some shaved ice. I think part of the problem was that I followed advice to dry incubate. Well, nobody mentioned (until I just read hatching 101) that at high altitude (we are at 4500 ft) one should not attempt that. Also, humidity is rarely over 20% here in the desert and is usually more around 12%. Another time, figuring dry hatch didn't work, I ended up over humidifying and had sticky chicks. So, I am back to babysitting the eggs like crazy and will try to keep humidity at original recommended levels or just slightly below. I plan to candle tonight. I also have a broody hen (bbs black orpington) and am considering putting at least some of them under her. She just went broody and is setting on nothing but is clearly there to stay. Glad I found you all!

 

[SmittenChicken]

Welcome to the thread, foxflower! Our eggs should be due just about the same time, and I'm candling tonight too! Glad to have another high-altitude person to compare notes with -- this is my first time hatching in an incubator. What are you shooting for in terms of humidity this time? I'm going with about 45-50% until lockdown, but based on what I see tonight I may adjust it a little.

My first hatch (with a broody) I used shipped eggs from sea level, and only had 25% hatch (I'm at about 5,000 feet). And then I read somewhere on this forum that it's particularly hard to hatch eggs from lower altitudes at high altitude. Not sure if you've seen that, but might be something to factor in.

Good luck with your candling tonight! And I can't wait to see what happens with your broody hen -- I keep hoping mine will feel the instinct again so she can raise this batch of chicks for me.

 

[dretd]

...Glad to have another high-altitude person to compare notes with -- this is my first time hatching in an incubator. What are you shooting for in terms of humidity this time? I'm going with about 45-50% until lockdown, but based on what I see tonight I may adjust it a little.

My first hatch (with a broody) I used shipped eggs from sea level, and only had 25% hatch (I'm at about 5,000 feet). And then I read somewhere on this forum that it's particularly hard to hatch eggs from lower altitudes at high altitude. Not sure if you've seen that, but might be something to factor in.

Hi Smittenchicken. I joined up back on page 4 but you may have missed my posts. I am at about 5,000 feet and in a semi-arid area so I am also a high altitude hatcher!

I am working with a borrowed incubator. The nice lady that lent it to me said she had better luck with 'dry' hatching but I don't think she was really dry as she added water when the wells dried out. I have been aiming for humidity between 30-45%. Its been so dry here its slipped lower before I noticed that it was at 25%. I weighed my eggs before starting and was planning on a re-weigh and candling tonight or tomorrow night (I set a week ago tomorrow morning). If I have too much weight loss I will bump up the humidity to slow down the loss.

I've had 2x 0% hatches and 1x 8% from shipped eggies, so I would be happy with the 25% you got even though is is far lower than you'd like! Not sure if it was an altitude problem or more of me being a novice hatcher using an incubator I made myself plus shipped eggs (one batch was pretty scrambled with lots of detached air cells, another had 4 broken eggs from poor packing) then maybe the altitude problem on top.

I talked to my home-town University's poultry vet and they said they regularly get large quantities of shipped eggs for hatching and she didn't think the altitude difference was a big deal because they had great hatches from their shipped eggs.

 

[SmittenChicken]

Hi dretd!
Sorry, I got a little behind on my forum reading and I did miss your post -- welcome and thanks for joining in! It's great to see so much activity on this thread!

Glad to have another person hatching at altitude. It sounds like you and I are shooting for about the same humidity, which I find very reassuring. I had some issues with mine hanging out in the low 30s when we had a cold snap, and I think the wells in the bottom have probably run dry but I'm waiting until I candle tonight to check it out -- I've been tucking a wet paper towel in the side and that does a good job of keeping humidity where I want it, so I may decide to just stick with that until lockdown.

And yes -- I was really quite happy with my 25% shipped egg hatch, especially considering I had quite a few rolling air cells too. But I'm hoping to do a little better with my local eggs this time around! Good luck with your hatch -- I'm excited to see those Ameraucanas and Legbars you're growing!

(and to anyone else I missed: Welcome and thanks for joining!)

 

[Loghousemom]

This is one of my eggs that I candled today. It's still pretty early (day 4) but can anyone tell me something from what they see here?

These should be further along by now, do you have a new pic?

I will look for that thread right away, thanks so much for pointing me in the right direction.

Just to have a comparison, I candled 2 chicken and 2 turkey eggs last night that were freshly laid just a few hours prior and they actually looked the same exact way. So now I'm wondering if it's just that way because they are very fresh indeed and the aircell is still very small. I will take pictures today in case anyone would like to see what I'm talking about. Turkey eggs are pretty easy to candle so I will use those to show what I'm talking about.

I got my incubator to hold a steady temperature for the most part now. It's still lower on the right side and I checked for any damage/holes or the like but couldn't find anything. I just put some ducked tape around the area where it closes to see if that might make a difference.
I hope everyone's eggs are doing well! Can't wait to see all the babies we're going to have here

Maybe just no big aircells since they were fresh and not shipped? I did not candle my eggs that I set from my own hens until day 10. I gave them 24 eggs, 7 were clear. We had 17 at lockdown. ( 9 hatched) We had several that seemed to have stopped developing at about lockdown day. I wonder if taking them out for candling before lockdown is what did it...

I'm joining in, too. I just got off a plane this afternoon with eggs a BYCer named Steen gave me, the sweetheart. He gave me 9 Cream Legbars and 3 Lavender Ameraucanan eggies. It was a spur of the moment thing (I was visiting family) so I had to borrow an incubator from a friend. It's warming right now. I think I will wait until first thing in the morning to set just to make sure the 'bator is stable.

It's nice to have friends to watch and wait with!

LUCKY!



Here are my new babies! Mutts from my mixed flock. We had 5 hatch on day 21. 2 day 22 and 2 more day 23. (Yes you only see 8 chicks. We had to put one down that was born with a severe deformity.)


Here are the new eggs that will go into the incubator either tomorrow or Monday. These will be super blue egg layers! I am trying to wait for the 2nd order of eggs and set them all together, since I am not sure how to set up a staggered hatch when I only have one incubator! Anybody have any idea how to clean these bad boys? They are awfully dirty!