Alright, here's what happend. We got a new dog, who was acting weird around the chickens. While I was at work tonight, the dog jumped over the five foot fence, broke through the top net mesh material and proceeded to slaughter, every one of my hens. Both of my roosters survived, somehow unscathed. Well after cleaning up the mess and making it look somewhat less like a Crime Scene, I found that there were four eggs in the nesting boxes. I'd like to try and hatch them, so that I can feel like its not all a loss. Both eggs are surely fertilized, and Right now I have them in a box, about 12 inches tall and 4 inches wide, surrounded by cloth and with a incubator light over them. Is there anything else I need to do so hopefully one of them hatches. I've never hatched eggs before, so all the help I can get would be very much appreciated. title edited for clarification
Oh, my goodness. I am so sorry to hear about this. BAD DOG! I am pretty new to all of this - working on my first hatch right now - but maybe you can get yourself an incubator ASAP to give those little guys the best chance possible? ~Cherlyn
Well, I am probably the last person to help here, but I will give it a shot. I've been researching incubation and hatching techniques (do's/don't's) because I have eggs arriving Thur or Fri morning. I bought a standard styrofoam incubator so that I could hopefully keep the temperature and humidity more stable. I found this basic model by Little Giant at my local feed store for about $43. In your case, it may not matter. My understanding is this, once the egg reaches an incubation temp (~99 F) the development starts, if the temp. falls to low after this point, the embryo may die. I'm not sure how low of a temp. it can survive. Most of what I've read says that in an incubator the temp should be 99F in a forced-air 'bator or 101-102F in a still air 'bator. You need to place a thermometer in the box with the eggs to see what temp. they are, but in an open box this may be difficult to get an accurate reading and keep it stable. You can use any kind of thermometer you might have around the house for now--from an aquarium, a food thermometer, or even a wall thermometer for the time being. For an emergency 'bator, you might want to try using a styrofoam cooler, if you have one. I would try putting them in that, cut a whole in the lid and try heating that way. Be careful!! If it gets too hot (internal temp of the egg to 103F or more), you might as well set the table. You also need to control the humidity which would be pretty difficult in a box. In the cooler (without the cloth), you can place some shallow containers of water--to increase humidity, you need to increase the surface area of water. You will also need a hygrometer to measure humidity. Lastly, don't forget to turn the eggs 3-5 times a day--1/2 turn each time. Here's some link that might help: http://www.msstate.edu/dept/poultry/hatch.htm http://www.shilala.com/incubating.html http://shilala.homestead.com/Howlongtohatch.html Good luck!! I'm sure there are others on here who can provide better emergency info. and ideas, but maybe this will get you through until others have time to respond with more/better info.
YOu need to make sure that the temperature stays at 101 or so above the eggs...put it in a draft free zone and turn 3 times a day(put x and o on each side so you can keep track). If you google it, you can get much more information about it with a lot of details.
