How late is too late to add eggs...

[Jeffross1968]

Just for future reference, is it possible to add eggs into a still air, no auto turner incubator at any point during the 21 days?

 

[Illia]

I'd say you are safe for the first 2 days, that's it. Beyond that and you'll need to turn eggs while others are in lock down, and in a still air, that can be tricky. Well, in any incubator, but still air especially.

 

[MuscovyMad]

I placed 6 eggs in my bator a week after placing one. I just raised the humidity for 2 days and stopped turning them when the first egg was on day 20. Then i lowered the humidity after that egg hatched and turned the remaining eggs. Then raised humidity again and 5 out of the 6 eggs hatched. Unfortunately the last one was shrink wrapped

. So i managed to hatch eggs after not turning them for a few days, so maybe you will get away with it at any point up until day 18. I'm not 100% sure.

 

[Gypsy07]

Technically, it's possible to add eggs into any kind of bator at any time during the 21 days. Your hatch results will vary from okay to downright crap though. It all depends how much value you place on all the eggs and how much of a chance you want to take with them. If I'm hatching normal eggs from my own birds, I'll add them willy-nilly and not worry about opening the bator to turn some while other are supposedly locked down. And the hatch rates I get are at best about 90% and at worst about 45%. Which is fine with me for not-very-special eggs. But if I'm hatching shipped eggs or rare/special ones from my own birds, I do it all exactly by the book.

What Illia says is pretty accurate. You'll get away with adding eggs for the first two or three days, that way you can just stop turning them all at the same time and when you go into lockdown, it just means that some of them will get a few extra days of high humidity, which by that late stage in the incubation, shouldn't do them very much harm, and you should still get the same kind of hatch rates you'd normally expect. Adding them at any other stage is do-able, and you'll probably still manage to hatch some chicks, but your hatch rates will most likely be greatly reduced...