Hello All,
I'll tell you a little trick about incubating. Chickens, and ducks too, go broody when their clutch threshold is reached. It is the combined pressure of the critical mass of eggs on their breast which gets them going. Collect all the eggs you want to hatch from the desired hen, duck, chicken, makes no difference. Store them a contrived environment at 52* fahrenheit at 50 % humidity. Turn them at least three times a day. Every 8 hours around the clock works best. They will remain viable for about 4 weeks. Then under a silkie place the starter eggs about which you care not. The threshold for silkies is about 10 medium hen's eggs. This varies a bit from hen to hen but once you learn it for a particular hen keep a note of it. Numbered leg bands are helpful if you have a few silkies. Sometimes to get the desired number of little ones I often run as many as 6 simultaneous incubating silkies each with 8 or so eggs. Why silkie moms? I find them to be the most dedicated and reliable chicken mothers of all breeds. Seldom does one of these abandon her babies to be. She must suffer great stress for this to happen. Most will go broody in 72 hours or less. Some of mine get turned on in about 24 hours! Once you find out what a particular hen's broody threshold is, you can turn them on like clockwork in subsequent incubation sessions as it is a constant in most individual silkie moms. Let the hen alone for about 3 days to make sure she is dedicated. Most silkies are very dedicated so that is generally not a problem. But one does not want to fool around with the precious primary target eggs. Remember that in many cases you may have paid a pretty penny to have them shipped to you. Incubating birds of all kinds do better if put in a quiet environment to get them going. Then one night one takes away the starter eggs and replaces them with the precious target eggs. In 21 days there are your baby chicks; 28 days for duckies! Duck eggs being larger reduces the number your silkie can handle. If you are working with duck eggs under the silkie watch for her to leave the nest to get a bite to eat, etc., and with a mist spray bottle lay a light coating of water mist on the eggs. Do not soak them or come any where close to doing it. Waterfowl eggs generally have a better hatch with the higher humidity you create. Spray them about twice a day; if you have to go away for a day don't worry it is not critical except at hatching time then you want three of the last incubation days with the mist procedure. Let us know how you do. I learned much of this good stuff as a young bird curator in a large city zoo; and am glad to share it in minute detail. We don't want anything to go wrong by missing a particular, do we? I really would like to know how you fare if you use this recipe.
Happy hatching!
Neal, the Zooman
