It's day 19 and things are starting to happen!!! - UPDATE WITH PICS!!!

[Sharona]

how exciting!!!! keep me up to date!

 

[Chellester]

Two more have pipped!!!

I guess it's no sleep for me tonight!

 

[Chellester]

Okay, I'm going to bed to try to make an attempt at sleep tonight.

So far, we have the three pipping, and most of the rest chirping and/or moving.

Keep your fingers crossed, and hopefully I will wake up to some peeps tomorrow!

 

[Sharona]

I'm going to bed too. I'm outta breath from chirping, peeping, and whistlin' at those eggs!

 

[Chellester]

When I woke up this morning, 2 more have pipped, and 2 of the first 3 that pipped have made larger holes and knocked away pieces of their shells and now I can see a little bit of the membrane. The third one has rolled a bit, and I can't see the pip anymore, but it's still moving and cheeping, so I assume everything's okay. It's been about 8 hours since my last post, so we are making slow but sure progress.

Keep your fingers crossed and I'll keep you all posted!

 

[Wolfpacker]

Do it! Do it! Do it!

 

[Motherhenandflock]

Yeah, go chickies, go!
What kinda bators did you use?

 

[Chellester]

I am using two styrofoam incubators. The one I am using for the incubating part is a Hova Bator 2362N with a fan to circulate the air and an egg turner. This is an older model that I bought used.

When I went egg crazy and started different batches at different times, I realized it would be best to have a seperate incubator for hatching, so I bought a Little Giant 10200 (that's the model that has the fan for circulated air). I almost bought another Hova Bator without the circulated fan to use for the hatching incubator, but it ended up going on backorder, so I cancelled it and got the Little Giant instead. In retrospect, I'm glad it worked out that way because I don't think I would have been happy with a still air incubator.

 

[Chellester]

One's almost out! It's pipped around about a third of the shell.

Not much progress on the rest of them, but since they starting hatching early, they might not be quite ready to come out yet.

 

[Chellester]

UPDATE!

About 15 minutes after my last post, the chick that had pipped a third of the way around its shell hatched. My DH and I watched- it was so great! It looked healthy and well-formed.

Then, we had to go out for a few hours... the rest that had pipped hadn't progressed much, so I was worried there was a problem and they weren't going to hatch, or even worse, the one that just hatched wouldn't make it either and it would be dead by the time we got back home.

When we got home, I couldn't believe my eyes!

There were FOUR chicks running around in the incubator!!!!!! I still can't believe it now!!!!!!! So there's those four, and two more pipping that I can see- the ones that hatched have rolled the eggs around so much that I don't know if the others are pipping or not.

Well, since these were shipped eggs and my first attempt at hatching, I must say so far I am very pleased!

I took pics of the first one right after it hatched, so I am going to take a few more pics and post them as soon as I can.

Thanks to everyone who hoped for a good hatch for me! I'm sure it helped!