Incubating Silkie Eggs From Chicken Junkie

[Chicken Junkies]

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OMG, the pressure is on! Please, please, please little eggies HATCH! lol

Thanks so much and best of luck, Gene.

 

[Edwards' East of Eden]

I'm 5-9% off. I calibrated per ... erm, instructions on youtube from someone who's a member here, I think. Basically, a bowl that will fit into a ziploc bag with your thermometer. Put un-iodized salt into the bowl, enough to make a good-sized pile of it in the bottom, then add enough water to make "wet sand" but not "soup". Seal up the bag around the bowl and the thermometer, give it at least six hours.

After eight hours, mine was fluctuating pretty wildly between 66% and 70%. It should read 75% in that environment. So ... I took a fine tip sharpie marker and wrote "add 7%" on the screen of the darned thing, since that's the average amount it was off. That way I won't forget, next time!

 

[Floridachicken1958]

Quote:
OMG, the pressure is on! Please, please, please little eggies HATCH! lol

Thanks so much and best of luck, Gene.

Hey once I got the eggs in the mail & seen how well they was packaged I said omg I have to spread the word on her packaging & the quality of her chickens.There you go, The heat is on!!! Thank You I'm positive I'll have a great hatch.. Here they come

 

[Floridachicken1958]

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Good deal,I got another 1 in there but it's like 11% high so I subtract 11 to get it correct.The 1 like you got is in salt bag now.Thank You for your info!!!

 

[Edwards' East of Eden]

No problem.

Do you make notes on your eggs as you go?

These eight I have under the webcam now, I have notes in pencil on. Two of them are from my slw at lay, who I bought from a home where she had a leghorn boyfriend. The other six are from my neighbor down the road who has tons of BO juveniles and one adult BO roo in a pen with about 16 adult BO hens ... and two turkeys. I wanted to incubate those two slw mutt eggs, but if I got chicks I didn't want it/them to be lonely, so I ran down there and she sent me back home with nine fresh eggs in my shirttail.

So, I started out with pencil of breed on the eggs, then after 10 days candled for the first time and made notes on all of them, again in pencil. Candled again a couple of times before they went into lockdown, notes each time, and a few tossed along the way, too. Even now, I have two eggs in there that I am this:sure aren't going to make anything - but they don't smell yet, so I wouldn't toss them. They just have little x's on the top side of them so I remember that I predicted no-go for them.

This is my first hatch, so maybe I'm a little obsessive. I wanted to do a test-hatch, though, before I actually spent any money on eggs, and thought this was the way to go. Plus, with any luck, I'll be putting a couple more good laying hens in my egg coop, while I hold off on starting my meat and breeding coops.

Nah, not obsessive.

 

[Floridachicken1958]

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No notes here cause I don't have that many breeds many breeds of them.I just have BO,RIR.LH thats all I got big enough to lay. I didn't buy an incubator, I read & watched on youtube how to build the & now this is where I am.Got me a waffer thermostat wired it up but started out with a water heater thermostat..I said to myself Why buy something when I can build it, So built 1 and purchased a egg turner really cheap and now I'm building a fridge incubator.In it I should be able to hatch about 300 eggs at a time.Plus I sex my own chicks.

 

[Edwards' East of Eden]

Oh, honey, we're birds of a feather. I circled 'round behind the local PetSmart late one Sunday night and wrangled four 'coons out of the way so I could dumpster dive for their thrown-away styrofoam live-fish shipping crates. The first three went running when I drove up, but the last one came out of the dumpster at me! That's fine, I could reach four crates and four lids without going a*s over teakettle into the bin!

So I have my hand-me-down LG still-air with a salvaged PC fan in it, and I've built a hatcher in one of those crates ... and I still have three more for later! I did go to the hardware store to buy glass for the windows and, standing there, saw a sign above the acrylic ($1 more per piece) saying "20 times more energy efficient than glass!" and I thought - well, hel*'s bells, I want to keep that heat in there, don't I? So I bought two 11x14 pieces, and put one of them in the lid, siliconed in, and then cut a hole in the side, too, for a 4x14 piece. So, once I have actual movement in there? I'll have side views, too! Woo! Baby pictures!

I have one of those small square fridges on the back porch. Those rotten puppies got to the cord and I can't seem to make it work again ... I've been thinking incubator. We'll see.

 

[Floridachicken1958]

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You should turn that mini fridge into a incubator since it will hold heat in alot better than anything else.

 

[Chicken Junkies]

Quote:
Good deal,I got another 1 in there but it's like 11% high so I subtract 11 to get it correct.The 1 like you got is in salt bag now.Thank You for your info!!!

FYI, info on calibrating a hygrometer is at http://chickenjunkie.com/raising-ch...to-calibrate-a-hygrometer-for-your-incubator/ and so glad it helped.

 

[Floridachicken1958]

The one I had bought from walmart yesterday was 67% after 6 hours so the humidity was at 68% after the 6 hour calibration. so with that I have to add 7 to it to have a accurate reading. But how long after I put it in incubator will it give the correct reading for me to add the 7?