Babsloveschickens
In the Brooder
- Feb 14, 2019
- 5
- 47
- 38
Hello All!
I've been reading the forum for the last couple of days and decided to join.
I live in North Idaho and have had chickens for about 20 years, but I've only just
now started incubating eggs from our own hens. Always ordered them online
before and just thought it would be more fun and interesting to hatch our own. I have
no idea why we waited so long.
So, our eggs went into "lock down" today and I'm just hoping and praying that I did
everything right. We initially put in 41 eggs. I culled about 5 that were not fertile in the beginning.
There were about 4 that I suspected were quitters, but
because I don't have any experience with this, decided to keep them in the incubator anyway, just in case I'm wrong. I water candled the remaining eggs today, before locking them down for the hatch. I've got 17 that floated and could definitely see movement. I had another 5 that floated but I couldn't detect movement, and I had 12 that sunk in the water, even though I had seen a good air cell the day before.
I placed them all into the incubator regardless, just in case. I guess we'll see in a couple of days which ones are viable.
I marked each egg, with an "O" for confirmed movement, a "?" for the ones that floated, but no movement detected, and an "X" for the sinkers. I did this so that next time, I would have a better idea which eggs were still viable and which should be culled before "lock down".
Thank you all for your tips and participation, and thanks to the owner for this very helpful forum!
I've been reading the forum for the last couple of days and decided to join.
I live in North Idaho and have had chickens for about 20 years, but I've only just
now started incubating eggs from our own hens. Always ordered them online
before and just thought it would be more fun and interesting to hatch our own. I have
no idea why we waited so long.
So, our eggs went into "lock down" today and I'm just hoping and praying that I did
everything right. We initially put in 41 eggs. I culled about 5 that were not fertile in the beginning.
There were about 4 that I suspected were quitters, but
because I don't have any experience with this, decided to keep them in the incubator anyway, just in case I'm wrong. I water candled the remaining eggs today, before locking them down for the hatch. I've got 17 that floated and could definitely see movement. I had another 5 that floated but I couldn't detect movement, and I had 12 that sunk in the water, even though I had seen a good air cell the day before.
I placed them all into the incubator regardless, just in case. I guess we'll see in a couple of days which ones are viable. I marked each egg, with an "O" for confirmed movement, a "?" for the ones that floated, but no movement detected, and an "X" for the sinkers. I did this so that next time, I would have a better idea which eggs were still viable and which should be culled before "lock down".
Thank you all for your tips and participation, and thanks to the owner for this very helpful forum!
