How long before trying to incubate?

[JChipowsky]

My hens just started laying in January, some are not yet laying but should be soon. We have a mixed flock of Crested cream legbars, brahmas, midnight majesty marans and Easter eggers. We want to incubate just the cream legbar eggs to start with, since our roo is also a cream legbar and we have a lot of family and friends who would like some.
The question is how long should I wait before I start saving back eggs to hatch?
Pictures of pretty blue eggs in good light and not so good light

 

[nuthatched]

A few months, until the eggs are full sized and less likely to be wierd.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Good question. It does make a difference.

One problem with hatching the first eggs a pullet lays is that many pullets do not lay perfect eggs to start with. It can take a while for a pullet to get the flaws out of her internal egg-making factory. You are probably familiar with obvious flaws like thin-shelled or no shelled, extremely thick hard shells, no yolk, double yolk, no whites, and just weird shaped eggs. There can be other issues with how the egg is put together you would never see just by looking. If the egg is not pretty much perfect it won't hatch with a healthy chick. A surprising number of pullets get all this right to start with but you can't count on it.

Another problem is that the first eggs a pullet lays are generally small. They don't hold enough nutrients or have the room for the chicks to grow to a decent size. I've hatched some of these small eggs. Many of them that actually hatch do fine but I've noticed the hatch rate is not as good as if I wait to set them and that more chicks die before they get to two weeks of age. I almost never lose a chick that hatches but when I do it is often a chick from a small egg.

One hatch I noticed that the eggs from a young pullet was not fertilized. I set 5 eggs from one young pullet and none hatched. I set 6 eggs from a different young pullet and all hatched. My conclusion was that she had not yet learned to allow the rooster to mate her or he did not know she needed to be mated.

These problems seem to pretty much go away after the pullet has been laying for at least a month. The glitches in forming the egg have generally been worked out, the eggs are a bigger, and she has socially matured enough that the eggs are fertile. I've had good luck if I wait at least a month.

Good luck!

 

[JChipowsky]

Good question. It does make a difference.

One problem with hatching the first eggs a pullet lays is that many pullets do not lay perfect eggs to start with. It can take a while for a pullet to get the flaws out of her internal egg-making factory. You are probably familiar with obvious flaws like thin-shelled or no shelled, extremely thick hard shells, no yolk, double yolk, no whites, and just weird shaped eggs. There can be other issues with how the egg is put together you would never see just by looking. If the egg is not pretty much perfect it won't hatch with a healthy chick. A surprising number of pullets get all this right to start with but you can't count on it.

Another problem is that the first eggs a pullet lays are generally small. They don't hold enough nutrients or have the room for the chicks to grow to a decent size. I've hatched some of these small eggs. Many of them that actually hatch do fine but I've noticed the hatch rate is not as good as if I wait to set them and that more chicks die before they get to two weeks of age. I almost never lose a chick that hatches but when I do it is often a chick from a small egg.

One hatch I noticed that the eggs from a young pullet was not fertilized. I set 5 eggs from one young pullet and none hatched. I set 6 eggs from a different young pullet and all hatched. My conclusion was that she had not yet learned to allow the rooster to mate her or he did not know she needed to be mated.

These problems seem to pretty much go away after the pullet has been laying for at least a month. The glitches in forming the egg have generally been worked out, the eggs are a bigger, and she has socially matured enough that the eggs are fertile. I've had good luck if I wait at least a month.

Good luck!

Thank you. Our girls have been doing pretty well, only one egg with no shell. Most eggs seem about the appropriate size for the breeds we have. I'm just so excited, it's hard to wait

 

[Huntmaster]

I'm just so excited, it's hard to wait

Ya understand that but you want your first experiences with hatching your own eggs to be good and stressless as possible. So many variables in incubation and things to go wrong you don't want to add to the list on your first run. I would wait as others have stated and research everything you can on incubation and set up incubator and test run getting yourself familiar with your incubator. Good luck incubating your own hatchlings is very exciting and rewarding when things are done right, can be a heart-breaking horror story if done wrong. Good Luck and don't be afraid to ask questions.

 

[JChipowsky]

Ya understand that but you want your first experiences with hatching your own eggs to be good and stressless as possible. So many variables in incubation and things to go wrong you don't want to add to the list on your first run. I would wait as others have stated and research everything you can on incubation and set up incubator and test run getting yourself familiar with your incubator. Good luck incubating your own hatchlings is very exciting and rewarding when things are done right, can be a heart-breaking horror story if done wrong. Good Luck and don't be afraid to ask questions.

We've incubated eggs before. We just collected them from the in-laws. These will just be the first we incubate out of our own hens.

 

[Huntmaster]

We've incubated eggs before. We just collected them from the in-laws. These will just be the first we incubate out of our own hens.

You do have a beautiful egg carton with that color mix.

 

[JChipowsky]

You do have a beautiful egg carton with that color mix.

Thank you

 

[nuthatched]

no whites

How often does that happen?

 

[Ridgerunner]

How often does that happen?

No whites? I've probably seen that twice. Really rare. No yolks are more common.