Is this considered a good hatch rate?

[Livinwright Farm]

Now that all of the eggs that are going to hatch, have hatched, we did the calculating and discovered that for our first incubation ever, we had a 48.6% hatch rate. Is this good, bad, or somewhere inbetween?

 

[dsqard]

I just did my first hatch and my hatch rate wasn't even that good so I would say that is a great start!

I actually got a better hatch rate from eggs that I had shipped to me than my own eggs. I would imagine that the numbers will get better the more I do it so I plan on doing an Easter hatch too.

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

For shipped eggs, a 50% hatch rate is good. If they were your own eggs, I personally would think the roo wasn't doing his job.

(Or it could be incubator problems.)

 

[Higins00]

I agree with ChickensAre Sweet. 50% is good for shipped eggs but would expect 80 or above on home eggs. Plus it's your first time so congrats.

 

[NoseyChickens]

Were they shipped eggs? If so that's pretty good. Actually no matter what for your first try it's pretty good. Did you base your numbers on the amount of eggs you set including those that never developed? I have seen before that some do not count the ones that had no development at all.

 

[Chickenpoor]

I would say somewhere in between because you almost had a 50% hatch.

 

[Livinwright Farm]

These were our own mixed breed eggs, our first time hatching eggs ever, 5 groups(grp1 set on day 1 grp 2 set on day 2, etc.) of eggs all in the same incubator... in other words a staggered hatch. After candling on day 10 it was discovered that only 35 of the 43 remained viable. Also, rough time not knowing how much humidity or when... later found out that basically the whole clutch was at 55-60% RH the entire incubation period

Oh well, we know better now. LOL.
Hoping for a better hatch rate with this next batch going in tonight... also going to raise the temp to 100(as suggested by other hatchers here) given that we have a still air.

 

[Cloverleaf Farm]

Just a thought on something to try here...if you save your eggs for a few days and set them all together, rather than setting every day, that might help too. Putting room temperature eggs in every day lowers the temp every day until the new eggs get up to temperature. This could have an ill effect on newly developing embryos....
Also, are you removing them to a seperate hatcher for lockdown? If you are opening said hatcher every day to add new eggs to lockdown, then it isn't really getting "locked down" at all. If they are staying in the incubator, same thing - you are opening it several times a day to turn eggs (assuming you aren't trying to hatch in a turner) effectively nullifying "lockdown" and the higher humidity needed for hatching.

 

[Livinwright Farm]

Quote:
These are all issues we encountered in our first staggered hatch... the same reasons why we will not be doing a staggered hatch ever again. Tonight, when I set the new clutch, there will be 36 eggs going in all at once, so there will be a definite LOCK-DOWN after the last by-hand turning on Day 18.
I guess it is all part of the newbie learning process... good thing I am a FAST learner!

 

[Cloverleaf Farm]

Quote:
These are all issues we encountered in our first staggered hatch... the same reasons why we will not be doing a staggered hatch ever again. Tonight, when I set the new clutch, there will be 36 eggs going in all at once, so there will be a definite LOCK-DOWN after the last by-hand turning on Day 18.
I guess it is all part of the newbie learning process... good thing I am a FAST learner!

Excellent! I bet you'll have a much better hatch then!!