How long to waitto get your chicks out?

[makenzieridgefarm]

How long should you wait to get your chicks out of the bator? I have 12 hatched this morning and have fluffed, but still have 20 more to go. Some have pipped, some have not. Is it ok to get the fluffed ones out or do i wait on the others?

 

[Ridgerunner]

They ship chicks in the mail, right. That usually takes 2 to three days. Just before they hatch, they absorb the yolk. This enables them to go a few days without eating or drinking. You can easily wait 48 hours or more to take them out of the incubator. Mama often waits two days to take the first ones to hatch off the nest.

You can take them out anytime, but you might wind up killing some of the unhatched ones if you do. But then there might not be any bad consequences. Some people regularly take chicks out of the incubator while some of us wait.

The risk is that you might shrink wrap a chick. If the humidity drops too low, the membrane inside the egg shell can dry out enough to shrink and stick to the chick. The chick cannot move enough to continue the hatch since it is wrapped so tightly. This risk is especially high to chicks that have pipped. Does this happen each and every time you open the incubator? No. Does it happen to every pipped egg? No. I once opened an incubator during hatch to take care of a problem and I shrink-wrapped one chick. The others that had pipped were not bothered.

How high is the risk? That depends on a lot of different things. Some incubators handle being opened better than others by recovering humidity quickly. How long do you leave it open? What is the humidity of the room when you open it? Some people take the incubator in a bathroom and turn on the hot shower to get the bathroom steamed up before they open the incubator. Some people mist with warm or hot water when they open it. For certain types of incubators, adding hot water to the reservoirs will help it recover humidity faster. Do you have good or bad luck?

Personally I try to wait until the hatch is over before I open it, but if I have to deal with something, I deal with it.

Good luck however you decide and congratulations on what sounds like a successful hatch.

 

[Tuffoldhen]

I almost never take the chicks out til the hatch is finish. They can stay upto 3 day in there. Pipped eggs can get shrink wrapped from opening the bator and that causes problems.