I am pretty inexperienced with incubators. On my first attempt, I followed the instructions faithfully, only to battle excessive humidity and irregular temperatures, and I was disappointed to achieve only a 50% success rate on a batch of shipped fertile eggs - and one chick was disabled.
We recently went on holiday for a week. The friend who let the chooks out and put them away each day didn’t collect the eggs. When we left we had 2 broodies sitting on 5 and 4 eggs. On returning, we found a total of 31 eggs under 4 broody hens.
By swapping the eggs around under different broodies as the hatching began, we got 27 successful hatches out of 28. The one egg that had been rejected got broken accidentally and had obviously failed to develop.
The last 3 eggs went into the incubator with about a handful of water in the bottom (nowhere near the recommended amount). This gave a perfect steady temperature and humidity of 40-45%. I was sure they were duds, but each one hatched, one a day, and were put under the broody girl with the last chicks that had hatched (she’s a brilliant mother).
Result: 30 hatched out of 31 under broody chooks (with a little help from the incubator), which is nearly 97%.
Here is a picture of the youngest (an Araucana cross):
All 30 are doing well. The cheeping in the hen house each morning is deafening!
We recently went on holiday for a week. The friend who let the chooks out and put them away each day didn’t collect the eggs. When we left we had 2 broodies sitting on 5 and 4 eggs. On returning, we found a total of 31 eggs under 4 broody hens.
By swapping the eggs around under different broodies as the hatching began, we got 27 successful hatches out of 28. The one egg that had been rejected got broken accidentally and had obviously failed to develop.
The last 3 eggs went into the incubator with about a handful of water in the bottom (nowhere near the recommended amount). This gave a perfect steady temperature and humidity of 40-45%. I was sure they were duds, but each one hatched, one a day, and were put under the broody girl with the last chicks that had hatched (she’s a brilliant mother).
Result: 30 hatched out of 31 under broody chooks (with a little help from the incubator), which is nearly 97%.
Here is a picture of the youngest (an Araucana cross):
All 30 are doing well. The cheeping in the hen house each morning is deafening!