Hatching already!

[MightyMama]

Tomorrow is day 21, and 5 have already broken their shell. I feel completely unprepared!! They went on lockdown on Sunday, I thought that they wouldn't even start until tomorrow. How long can the hatched ones stay in there until the rest of the eggs have a chance to catch up? Is it 18-20 hours after they pop through the shell or after they are out of the shell completely? I have a very tiny (3d printed) waterer in there to add water for them to drink if they have to stay in longer to wait for the others, but I don't know how long that would be.

 

[Yorkshire Coop]

Once the chicks have hatched fully from the shell they can in theory live off their yolk sac for up to 3 days without food or water. They absorb the yolk sac prior to hatch so in a natural environment they can stay under the hen until she feels hatch is complete.

It’s just the same for incubator hatched chicks. Personally I like to leave them in the incubator for at least 24 hours after hatch or if the incubator is pretty full of hatched chicks I will quickly move the fluffy ones to the brooder.

I would remove your waterer from the incubator as any open water in there could cause them to drown once they have hatched.

You may also find that once the first chick has hatched it’s cheeping will spur the other eggs on to get hatching.

Good luck with your hatch

 

[MightyMama]

It currently is empty, I didn't want to change my mind and want it in there when it was too late. It's super shallow, like half an inch, and I could fill it using a tube and syringe through a vent hole in the incubator. I didn't realize they could go 3 days. I'm terrified that I'm going to have 5 hatch tonight and then nothing for another couple of days. I do not want to open it until everyone is ready because our home is cold and dry as can be.

 

[Harmony Fowl]

Definitely don’t put any water in that bowl. You’ll see why when they hatch. Imagine a tiny, soaked, exhausted baby deer. They are clumsy, disoriented and exhausted. They will collapse and rest wherever it suits them and you don’t want to give them facedown in that bowl of water as an option.

Good luck with the hatch!

 

[MightyMama]

Thanks. I won't now. The first one is already out. I expected it to take a lot longer. There was quite a bit of goop left in the egg, but its moving around and looks good from all sides (as far as I can tell). There are quite a few that have cracked shells, and two that look like they have a nice window.

Did I mess up my days? I counted a day 0...and I thought that they wouldn't start cracking shells until tomorrow morning. If I only did lock down two days ago, could that have been bad for some of the others? Or is it not unusual to have an early bird?

 

[rita2paul]

mine are the same, two has started to crack their shell but are not due until tomorrow. one started hatch early this morning and has still not got out the shell, that's now 18 hours. getting a bit worried about it.

 

[Harmony Fowl]

Whether you started on day 1 or 0, 21 full days is what’s considered full incubation time. I have had chicks go as early as the latter half of day 19. I have also forgotten to lock down until a day late. In both cases things turned out okay and I hope they do for you, too. Early hatchers can mean a couple most likely things. One, your entire incubator may be slightly warmer than you think. Additional heat, up to a point, speeds development and results in early hatches. Or, two, your incubator may not be consistent with temperature throughout. Mine is like this. It may be 99.5 in the warmest spot, but the coolest reads 95. An additional thermometer or several may help you determine if you have cool spots. Inconsistent temp can mean the chicks with the most heat may hatch early, while those with slightly lower heat hatch a little behind. I had one hatch spread out from day 19-22. That was my inconsistent incubator at work. Day 19 chicks got all the heat, day 22 were in the cool spots. I get around that by rotating eggs through the warm and cool spots when I turn them. Those are just two possible troubleshooting issues you may want to investigate.

 

[MightyMama]

6 have hatched so far. We had some issues with temps on day 1, but we added two fans and it really evened out the temperature. Maybe it was too high. Everyone seems to be doing good. I'm just nervous about how long I can leave them in there before I have to worry. I had to turn the extra fans off because they were getting too close and our quick fix for eggs didn't give us time to make a quick fix for chicks. My husband wants to lift the lid and glue on a protective screen so we can turn the extra fans back on, but I'm terrified of opening the incubator and killing all the chicks who are still working on getting out.

So if I have more than half hatched at the end of tomorrow, should I scoop out the hatched chicks? Or give it a second night? I just have a LG, so it's nothing fancy.

 

[Harmony Fowl]

I would not open the incubator to do any kind of renovations at this point, that would take too much time, but by all means remove the hatched chicks when they are dry (more or less) and steady in their feet. Open it as little as possible to scoop them out, the point is to retain the heat and moisture, and be quick, but a few moments should not endanger those still hatching.

 

[MightyMama]

We are at 19 of 26 (one of which I suspected was dead, but I left in "just in case"). We are at 24 hours from the first hatch, most of the rest hatched between 6pm and 8am, with 2-4 happening between 8 am and now. The humidity is so high, they are not really getting dry. I'm probably going to go in and collect the ones who have hatched, do I leave in the newer hatchlings? or just grab everyone? The remaining 6-7 eggs don't appear to have any cracks in the shells. I can't decide on if I should do this soon, or wait until tonight...