June Hatch a Long

[starlingsbaby]

I'm doing 99.5 and dry incubating because the air in the house is about 50% humidity. I like to keep it around 35% and then 75+% for lockdown.

Having your humidity at 70% could possibly drown the ducklings depending on how humid your area is.

i live in florida and it has been being 80+ here. so do u suggest i do a dry one as well, ?

 

[Shokokuphoenix]

Time for me to chime in with my feathery zoo!

I've got a bunch of eggs in the 'bators right now, and I've been going strong with hatches a few times each week since early spring. Just this last Friday and Sunday I hatched 14 Jumbo Coturnix and 6 Red Golden Pheasant (and one surprise Yellow Golden Pheasant). I also have over 110 Jumbo Coturnix Quail eggs, a dozen+ Duckwing and Shojo Ohiki eggs, 16 Exchequer Leghorns, a fistful of Blue Ginger Phoenix Bantam eggs, and I just loaded 9 wiggling-peep filled Schubert line Phoenix, 7 Ismer line Phoenix and a couple of ready-to-pop Ohiki and Bantam Phoenix eggs into my hatcher-bator.

I've already hatched out a small army of Bantam Phoenix, Ohikis and a few Standard Phoenix, untold numbers of Coturnix and Button Quail, and a handful of Red Golden Pheasants. PS: Most of the Bantam Phoenix, all of the German Phoenix and Ohikis are all from Aubrey at Boggy Bottom Bantams, so these are beautiful top tier longtail bitties here!

These are all shipped eggs from all over the country, so even taking the rigors of shipping/infertiles/temperature extremes/ random-???, I'm pleased to say that my hatch rate has averaged a solid 50-60% on over 700+ eggs of five different species and twenty different breeds of fowl this season. I have experienced the irritation of a 0/12 hatch this season (a bonafide Post Office Omelet, delivered directly to my PO Box! How ever so convenient! ;D), but I've also experienced the joy of a perfect 12/12.

My shipped egg incubation tools/methods:
I'm using all styro-bators (3 Hovabators and 1 LG; three air-circulated, one still-air, all auto-turned) in a temp and humidity controlled room (inside a central AC house set at 70 degrees constantly), and I put a dab of bleach in with the water that I fill the bators/hatchers with. I run 99.5 on all bators/hatchers with 45-50% humidity. The humidty/thermometers that I use are the newest models of combo hygrometer/thermometer from Incubator Warehouse, and I use two per incubator/hatcher, one right and one left side.

When I go into lockdown, I put each egg in a carton of egg-appropriate size (quail, bantam/pheasant, standard breed chicken) and load a single fresh sponge soaked in purified water. I've found that the putting the combination of a capful of bleach and water into any water tray (that will not physically contact a live chick... its not nice to let a newborn baby chick roll through even mild bleach water with open eyes) markedly reduced the 'incubator stagnation smell' and bacterial blood-ring deaths that you get with plain tap or bottled/purified water. My incubators are cleaned with Tek-Trol disinfectant between incubations.

I candle once every five days with a 300 lumen Fenix defensive LED flashlight (my rule of thumb for a 'good' candling flashlight: if at its highest power you can hold it under your fingers and see the blood vessels and bones of your hand, its a good one!) and remove any dead, oozing or infertiles immediately. PS: You will be able to see the difference between live arteries and dead ones, individual toes, and see a peep's heart beating perfectly with 250-350 lumens of light penetration. As a comparison, the standard LED lights sold for $5-10 by Incubator Warehouse average 30-50 lumens. Note: Coturnix/Button quail are still irritating to candle due to shell color/speckling/size and density... its like trying to peer through a steel BB pellet.

I've also found that hatching the eggs out in a similar position to how they were incubated significantly increased my live hatches. I suspect this has something to do with keeping chick positioning stable and ensuring that any excess fluid inside the egg is distributed towards the bottom of the egg (thereby preventing post-internal pip drownings). My brooders are kept right beside me in the house (in part so I can pick up on babies that need additional care but in part to socialize with my new feathered friends), and consist of two twenty gallon retired aquariums with two office desk lamp 60 watt bulbs overhead (one at each end).

Initially I use only pine chip bedding but as they age, I use pine chips and Sweet PDZ granule zeolite ammonia and liquid absorbing mineral (its sold as a horse stall freshener). Note: Day-olds will eat more granules than food if granules are introduced too early, so wait 2-3 weeks before adding granules. Everyone gets started off on Grow-Gel and hand-crushed non-medicated turkey/game bird starter (chickens get moved to other feeds as needed, all game birds stay on it). The aquarium tanks have screened metal lids for any early flyers.

I use empty 16 oz water bottles with a chicken nipple screwed into the cap end as their waterers (prevents water fouling and drowning issues with Button and Coturnix quail day-olds). I've experimented with leaving in a standard 'fount' type quail waterer and the nipple-on-a-Dasani bottle waterer with under 24 hour old Button and Coturnix quails, and even given the choice between the two, they always flock to the nipple waterer (I suspect that the reason why is that its more 'fun' to pick at the shiny silver tip than just tipping down into a plastic lip, just like how drinking with a straw is more 'fun' for kids than drinking straight from a cup). I've switched entirely from founts to nipples nowadays.

Happy hatching luck to us all! <3

 

[Shokokuphoenix]

Note: Corrected the Great Wall O' Text with a different browser.

 

[pickitfarm]

Spoke with DH and nothing has pipped, zipped or hatched from our 22 eggs. Today is 21 1/2 days. I am afraid we may have a complete bust on this hatch which is very disappointing. We are going to keep them in the incubator until tomorrow to see if there is a delay but I do not believe so. I have heard that Maran have a tendency to take longer but that is not what is hatching. The Ameraucana's are local and the SFH were shipped, of which two eggs were broken in shipping. I am a little bummed right now. I am afraid that something happened with temps/humidity when he was not around and we were not aware.

 

[dolfi]

today was such a beautiful day after the raining week end that i decided to put my four week old chicks to take some sun.

I didnot think and i guess left them too long and lost two out of five. They were my favorite. they had water and food, i guess the sun was not what they needed

 

[Sapphiregemmer]

Quote:

Mine have been pretty strange. I am guessing because I was using still air before, and they developed slower due to lower & less uniform heat. My chicks that just hatched pipped on day 22, and hatched on day 23. Keep up hope. I did a staggered hatch, my Barnevelders started pipping this morning, and it's day 22 for them now, not all have pipped some will pip later on this evening i'm sure. 24 hours past that they will start to zip. My 1st hatch was nearly right on the button, all pipped at day 22, and zipped on day 23 within 24 hours (+- a few hours)

Keep up hope they'll still hatch. I know it can be stressful. I know i sure was stressed, but then I woke up to a 'bator full of peepers

Well worth the wait!

Kyle

 

[RoostersCrow HensDeliver!]

Just updating, looks like I have 16 hatched and 3 more pipped. There's a total of 37 in the bator. This is day 20 for me.

 

[redhen689]

My egg that pipped yesterday didn't progress, The chick was dead in the shell when I got home from work today. It looks like she might have been turned the wrong way around. I'm not sure she would have made it if i had been home to help her. I'm no expert, but things just didn't look right in the shell. She was from an egg that my broody hen had left uncovered more than once, so I didn't have high expectations. I have one other egg on day 19, same senario, although no pip yet.
The other eggs in the 'bator are on day 16, and looking good.

 

[pickitfarm]

Thanks for the boost Kyle. My DH is saying we need to wait. I just had not read anything about others having to wait past the 22 day except for Maran. We will continue in holding pattern.

 

[kynewbchickie]

How exciting,

come on babies, don't be shy.

Congrats on your two that have already hatched - pics please

We now have one Lav and four Splits zipped and out...another egg has started pipping, and still another is chirping and moving around. As requested...here's your pics!


(the one with the reddish hue to his back is still a wee bit wet, but is drying nicely with the other two under the lamp)


(the Lav zipped about 2 hours ago, and the other Split had literally JUST popped out and moved to this location before I snapped this photo. The egg directly behind the Lav is the one pipping right now, and the one right next to the new Split's rear is the one rolling around and chirping)

I'm so tickled that this hatch is going so well...the air cells were really, REALLY wobbly and scrambled from what seems to be a crazy shipping journey. But so far, so good...here's hoping the rest catch up!