How long can I wait after recieving purchased eggs?

[chickenboyriley]

Hi everyone,

I got an incubator for my birthday. My Dad let me order eggs from e-bay. I didn't know about this site. The auctions are ending at different times. We received 10 eggs today. The other eggs, a batch of 12 and 10 will be here next week. Can I let the ones I got today sit outside the incubator or should I put them in and then add the other later. If I keep them out, where should I keep them, and what temp. should they be kept at. I am new here and to raising chicks. Thanks for your help.

Riley

 

[debilorrah]

7-10 days from HATCH at the most. Honestly? You being a first timer and all, set the eggs you have now. Set the other two sets at the same time. That way you will only have two hatch dates and putting the first hatchers into lockdown is not an issue for the later eggs. Does that make sense?

 

[brahmapapa]

if you have access to a second incubator, even if you borrow one temporarily it would be a good idea to preheat the eggs that you are adding to the first batch already in the incubator so the additional eggs don't cool the first batch as it takes hours for them to come up to correct temp. I strongly recommend not adding moisture to your incubator so the air sac enlarges correctly. Check out the posting in this forum" Chooks Chicks Cheat Sheat" for incubation. Just do a search for her info, its a good primer for a first timer. if you can't borrow a second incubator when you are ready to warm them to add to the eggs already started, you can try the following. Get yourself an aquarium thermometer. Fill a large bowl with warm water and use the thermometer to add hot or cold water to adjust until it is about 101 degrees. when its stable at 101, place the eggs in individual plastic sandwitch bags, squeeze all the air out and seal so they are water tight. Y ou can then place them into the water and allow them to absorbe the heat for an hour or so. After an hour, tahe all the eggs out, add hot water to adjust the bowl water temp back to 101 and put the eggs back in the water. You may have to do the water adjustment as above several times in order to get the egg internal temps up to close to 101 degrees at which time you can remove them from the plastic bags and add them to the incubator. The purpose of this is to prevent temp rollback which occurs when you add cool eggs to already started and developing eggs. When the first batch of eggs get to day 18 of incubation, follow chooks chicks advice as far as humidity increase and go into lockdown. as soon as the first batch of eggs are hatched out, remove all water and humidity as well as hatching debris and go back to incubating the second batch without humidity until day 18 of that batch of eggs, then get the humidity up as she suggests and go into lockdown again. what you are doing by splitting the hatch times is always a challenge, especially for a first timer. I wish you the best of luck with your hatch, if you have any questiond feel free to ask, I or any of the many people in this forum with experience will always be glad to help you out.

 

[wsdareme]

You didn't mention what type/brand of incubator you have.

Being a total newbie, I sure hope it's not a Little Giant, or even a Hovabator. The still air styrofoam bators are really difficult for beginners, and it sounds like you've already invested some good money in hatching eggs. If it is an LG or Hova, definitely search this site and get all the information you can to try to have a successful hatch, and the Chook's Chicks Cheat Sheet is valuable for those incubators.

Good luck!!