Help! Chicks in a bator??? How long?!

[77horses]

help!
I am currently trying to hatch two chicken eggs in my homemade bator. They are on their 5th day.

I was wondering, when the eggs hatch, do you leave the chicks in the bator? If so, how long should they stay there? Should I move them to another small box with food/water and a light?
Please give me some advise! I have never hatched out any eggs before, so this is new for me!

Thanks!

 

[Akane]

Technically they could survive up to 3days without food or water. Most people remove them once they are dry or within a few hours. If your using a small styrofoam incubator you want to avoid opening it until all the chicks are as close to finished hatching as possible. You have a risk of losing any chicks that haven't pipped and making it harder for the ones hatching to get out if you let too much humidity out while removing chicks. I usually wait until 2 or 3 have hatched and all have at least pipped before I start slipping chicks out. The chicks making noise and banging around in the incubator also seems to encourage the others to hatch. If I leave a chick in the next one tends to hatch in a couple hours but everytime I took them all out it would be 4-6hrs or even overnight before the next one would hatch.

 

[77horses]

ok thanks!
but what if i don't have a Styrofoam bator? I have one that was homemade(made from a plastic box, covered in tin foil, and then the outside was covered with a cardboard box to keep heat in.

 

[Akane]

It depends how well it holds heat and humidity and how well it recovers. If you can open it to remove chicks without a huge drop and it recovers pretty much immediately then you don't have a problem. Otherwise with the smaller not as well insulated incubators you have to be extra cautious or the drop in humidity will cause the chicks to get stuck in the eggs and not hatch.