Incubating, an Elementary Question

[rick54]

So I'm reading up on this incubation of eggs, and see that as you get closer to the hatching date, you remove the eggs from the auto turner and set them on the incubator floor to hatch, as well as adjust humidity etc.
My question then has to do with the different ages of the eggs. If you had 40 eggs in the incubator, and those 40 eggs were laid the same day by 40 different hens, then they'd all hatch approximately at the same time. Now if you collected the 40 eggs say over a weeks time from a flock of only 6 hens, wouldn't some of the eggs still have to remain in the turner until they've reached their date to be removed from the turner, seeing that they'd all be in different stages of development? Maybe I'm just over thinking this egg hatching thing! LOL

 

[Pyxis]

If you put all forty eggs in the incubator on the same day, they'd all hatch at the same time, regardless of when they are laid. If however you put them in on different days, then yes, they would all hatch on different days, which is why it's a bad idea to do that unless you have a separate incubator you can use as a hatcher to move eggs into as they go into lockdown.

 

[WalnutHill]

And if you put them in on different days, you want to be sure that you don't have to move them to the hatcher while other eggs are in lockdown or hatching, so stagger a week to allow for cleanout and to avoid having to rush things. Pick a day, like set every Saturday morning.

 

[AmyLynn2374]

If you put all forty eggs in the incubator on the same day, they'd all hatch at the same time, regardless of when they are laid. If however you put them in on different days, then yes, they would all hatch on different days, which is why it's a bad idea to do that unless you have a separate incubator you can use as a hatcher to move eggs into as they go into lockdown.

xs 2