Hatching percentage

[JaeG]

Thanks for the input! I just want to make sure that the eggs i place in the incubator have a legitimate chance to hatch.

Are they your own eggs, or eggs you were able to pick up? Shipped eggs unfortunately have a lower chance of hatching successfully. Being bounced around on their travels to you does not do them any favours. But sometimes you have to take a chance, especially if you are after particular breeds.

Incubators can have cooler and warmer spots so it's a good idea to rearrange your eggs every couple of days so that eggs are never in the same spot for too long to even these out. Temperature should also be measured about where the embryo is sitting in the egg. The embryo always rises to the top so if the eggs are laying on their sides it will be the highest point of the egg, but if they are set upright the air cell will keep them sitting a little further down so I think you measure it about 2/3rds up the side of the egg.

Just remember there's always someone around on BYC if you have any questions as you go along. I hope you are successful and end up with lots of cute little chicks.

 

[Rooster Giddens]

I hope this doesn’t sound rude, but have you ever hatched before?

The only way to “disrupt” an embryo is by shaking them, dropping them, or keeping them too hot or too cold.

They are turned daily for the first 18 days of incubation, and that is one very important factor of incubation. Without it, they wouldn’t hatch.

No I haven't hatched before. I know that the eggs need to be turned 3 times a day for 18 days and then the humidity is increased and the eggs are locked down. My question was, is there a way to hurt the embryo by too much candling? While candling it may be necessary to turn the egg several times and in different directions in order to see the development of the embryo and can this cause damage to the development of the chick?

 

[Rooster Giddens]

Are they your own eggs, or eggs you were able to pick up? Shipped eggs unfortunately have a lower chance of hatching successfully. Being bounced around on their travels to you does not do them any favours. But sometimes you have to take a chance, especially if you are after particular breeds.

Incubators can have cooler and warmer spots so it's a good idea to rearrange your eggs every couple of days so that eggs are never in the same spot for too long to even these out. Temperature should also be measured about where the embryo is sitting in the egg. The embryo always rises to the top so if the eggs are laying on their sides it will be the highest point of the egg, but if they are set upright the air cell will keep them sitting a little further down so I think you measure it about 2/3rds up the side of the egg.

Just remember there's always someone around on BYC if you have any questions as you go along. I hope you are successful and end up with lots of cute little chicks.

I am trying to learn any tips or techniques to improving my chances of hatching a higher percentage of eggs, once I start. I appreciate your input and suggestions!

 

[Mellowmalt]

hey rooster welcome to byc.
The eggs can routinely cool down for up to an hour. I just try not to do it too many times in a day so candling is fine but I try to candle just a few at a time and always close the incubator quickly to avoid letting too much heat escape while candling.

If the incubator underheats it can then try to overcompensate and overheat so try to keep things steady by avoiding heat loss in the incubator but do candle the eggs and don't worry about them cooling down a little while you are doing it.

You might think it is up to the person incubating and this to some extent is true but once things are set up there is very little one can do. I suppose you were talking about mistakes, that is true a lot of mistakes can be made.
In my experience a hatch is either really successful or really bad. This kind of makes sense, either conditions were optimal or they were less than optimal.
Sometimes it comes down to the incubator, not all are built the same and some are better at maintaining an even temperature throughout the whole incubator than others. This might result in some hatching well while others might not.

Nothing much you can do about that.

I find the health of the eggs is vitally important, I probably notice this because I routinely buy eggs on ebay and some are really healthy but sometimes the eggs are small or they are porous and sometimes they are born very weak. I find when this happens these eggs are more prone to not making it throughout incubation and it can make you question if you made a mistake or if the eggs were poor quality or got damaged in the post to start with. Most of the times you never find the answer but as you get more experience and can start ruling out your own mistakes if things go wrong then it might be the eggs themselves.

Hatching out healthy eggs is much more fun, I find they can tolerate mistakes better too. So there is lots of different variables involved.

 

[Tonyroo]

I'm curious as to the hatch percentage of everybody's success rate using an incubator! Is there anyt such thing as a 100% success rate? If so what's the secret to success?

My last hatch was 100 percent. It was from my own flock. 7/7 hatched, except the first chick died from being pecked on the by the Serama chicks. So ended with 6.

Having high quality eggs from a healthy flock makes a hugh difference in terms of all hatching. Plus the incubator has to be adjusted based on the amount you decide to hatch. So if you put in 42 eggs, that incubator can't be running with cool spot. All eggs must receive 99.5.

I'm using a DIY incubator and can hold 10 eggs max . If I put more than 10 the threshold for even heating becomes uneven causing late hatches with possible fatalities. I've tested my incubator extensively for anomalies, mainly cold spots, so reworked the heat source and fan for best positioning for even heat distribution. Now this is a flawless unit and trusted.

 

[Rooster Giddens]

hey rooster welcome to byc.
The eggs can routinely cool down for up to an hour. I just try not to do it too many times in a day so candling is fine but I try to candle just a few at a time and always close the incubator quickly to avoid letting too much heat escape while candling.

If the incubator underheats it can then try to overcompensate and overheat so try to keep things steady by avoiding heat loss in the incubator but do candle the eggs and don't worry about them cooling down a little while you are doing it.

You might think it is up to the person incubating and this to some extent is true but once things are set up there is very little one can do. I suppose you were talking about mistakes, that is true a lot of mistakes can be made.
In my experience a hatch is either really successful or really bad. This kind of makes sense, either conditions were optimal or they were less than optimal.
Sometimes it comes down to the incubator, not all are built the same and some are better at maintaining an even temperature throughout the whole incubator than others. This might result in some hatching well while others might not.

Nothing much you can do about that.

I find the health of the eggs is vitally important, I probably notice this because I routinely buy eggs on ebay and some are really healthy but sometimes the eggs are small or they are porous and sometimes they are born very weak. I find when this happens these eggs are more prone to not making it throughout incubation and it can make you question if you made a mistake or if the eggs were poor quality or got damaged in the post to start with. Most of the times you never find the answer but as you get more experience and can start ruling out your own mistakes if things go wrong then it might be the eggs themselves.

Hatching out healthy eggs is much more fun, I find they can tolerate mistakes better too. So there is lots of different variables involved.

I appreciate the input! I realize that all incubators are not created equally and they can effect the outcome of the amount of eggs that hatch.Im trying to figure out what i can do to insure hatching success on my end.

 

[Rooster Giddens]

My last hatch was 100 percent. It was from my own flock. 7/7 hatched, except the first chick died from being pecked on the by the Serama chicks. So ended with 6.

Having high quality eggs from a healthy flock makes a hugh difference in terms of all hatching. Plus the incubator has to be adjusted based on the amount you decide to hatch. So if you put in 42 eggs, that incubator can't be running with cool spot. All eggs must receive 99.5.

I'm using a DIY incubator and can hold 10 eggs max . If I put more than 10 the threshold for even heating becomes uneven causing late hatches with possible fatalities. I've tested my incubator extensively for anomalies, mainly cold spots, so reworked the heat source and fan for best positioning for even heat distribution. Now this is a flawless unit and trusted.

I really appreciate your input! Did you candle on a regular basis? Is there anything you did special? There are so many variables involved?

 

[Tonyroo]

I really appreciate your input! Did you candle on a regular basis? Is there anything you did special? There are so many variables involved?

I candled on day 7 and tried to candle on day 12 but I couldn't see through the tan egg. I hand turned them 3 times a day and basically just left it alone.

During lockdown humidity was at 65 percent, when a chick hatched it cause the humidity to shoot up to 80 percent, so I propped the lid to let the humidity drop a bit, I still had eggs that haven't hatched yet and didn't want them to drown. So my only concern was maintaining humidity levels. So all of them can hatch without incidents.

I have eggs pipping today there due tomorrow though. Looks good so far.

 

[Mellowmalt]

Candling lots will not improve results.
You do it to check on progress and remove bad eggs. Thats about it, there is no benefit to the egg from being candled.

Just like there is no other real beneficial thing you can do, I mean you can gladly try playing them some music, it might improve things but on a statistical scale the results would be minimal. The best thing you can do is keep them at the right temp and figure out what the right humidity for your eggs needs to be. On the first incubation you won't know at what humidity to set your incubator. The humidity should be set so the eggs lose the right amount of moisture throughout the 21 days. Some people find a really low humidity works for them, whereas others pick something more in between.
For me my preferred humidity is 48% for bantam eggs and a bit lower for bigger eggs.

One thing that is hard for people to achieve is the 70% humidity needed for lockdown.

One thing I have suspected that happens to a lot of people is they add a dish of water or fill the humidity tray full of water and they use cold water.
Now on the badly designed incubators adding cold water can really mess up the heat setting. The sensor will think it's too cold in the incubator because lots of cold water was suddenly added. The incubator will heat up and so will the water. It doesn't take long for the water to heat up but once it has warmed up the incubator is then going to be too hot from this overheating and you often hear chicks dying in the shell on day 18. The day of lockdown.
Anyway just a hopefully helpful theory to make you aware not to add cold water or never a lot of it. Always warm the water up first because cold water will cool the incubator and the heater will kick in to overtime. Overheating is far worse than underheating. Especially in the final 3 days, you can even safely lower temps by half a degree C in the final 3 days of lockdown, the rest of the time the incubator will be on autopilot so just be aware day 18 is a critical day and try to know in advance how to quickly get humidity to the right level without having to fuss around with an open incubator and adding cold water that will end up causing problems.
Hope that helps.

 

[bchomestead]

I stopped turning daily a few years back and have had small 100% collected batches in a mixed incubator. Once every couple days (even 3) is common (then once in awhile 2X in a day). I don't think I've had less success doing this. I don't fuss much on candling, but usually once at about 10 days if I want the space, which means I'll put all stages in a single small incubator that holds 20+. It means cleaning the tray and grate after a hatch, but it works. Try to do more with less since our electric is sun powered. I've always had way better hatches on my own eggs than picked up or shipped ones.