Learning center - shipped eggs and hand carried eggs incubation

[tnchickenut]

Ok. I bought 9 French Wheaten Marans off ebay. I am going to be setting them in the incubator tonight along with some of my own stock. I just want the female Marans... so here is a very early heads up that there should be males for sale in the future.

My own Delawares are being set. I have checked for bullseyes and have got good results. However, I have already got two reports this year of people who bought them having issues hatching... so here I go. I'm going to see if they just don't want to develope or maybe there is shipping or operator errors going on. I will be setting 7 of them. I may end up selling them right away or letting them feather to see what they turn into. I'm not sure yet. Space is a issue right now since I have 30 bantams comming in.

Then, I will be setting 6 silver sebright eggs of my own. Once again, testing. I may sell all of those. I have plenty already for this year.


Yes, I know I can allow them to develope until day 5-7 and check veining... however, the issue seems to be (with these two buyers) that some didn't develope at all and others did develope all the way but didn't hatch.

I'm posting this as a learning experience for everyone to use. So, excuse me when I break it down "barney style" from time to time.

I will be adding pictures often. Subscribe!

Here we go with the lesson plan...............................................................................................................................................................................................................

STEP ONE: SET UP!
I will be using a still air styrofoam incubator (Hov-a-bator) with the coordinating automatic turner. I have used this model many, many times before and am very comfortable with it. I have thought about getting a "upgrade" but then when I see the prices of others and think about how I get good hatches out of these... I stick with this one.
FIRST THING... you should clean your incubator. You can use 50/50 water/bleach to spray it all out and wash it. You need to let the bleach water sit awhile and kill all the nasty bacteria. I prefer "trifectant" tablets. Man, this stuff takes all the nasty stuff off from the last hatch and I know it is killing bacteria, fungi, and viruses. I use it for coop cleaning in the spring and fall, I use it for the goats, chickens, ducks... but the most often I use it is the incubator and brooder. Well worth the investment.

So, now I have my incubator cleaned and dried. Now, I set it where it will be for the next 21-24 days.

Find a place that is draft free, a place that is safe from anyone knocking it over or messing with it... find a place in your house that is safe and the temperture stays steady. I have such places. My dogs are not allowed in all the rooms... this helps hatching and brooding alot.

I set up my incubator last night. I have the water in the center tray. I have the turner on. I have the thermometer (just the hov-a-bator kind) laying on top of the turner trays. I have the pointy sharp edges of the wire mesh taped (so you don't hurt the boogers by accident). I used to use the springfield thermometer/hygrometers you get at wal-mart for $7... but the second one I got was calibrated so badly I had my eggs a 112F for the first half of the first day, so I'll go back to the "old fashioned" way. (And I still got 100% hatch out of those SHIPPED eggs - point there... never ever assume you killed the clutch and give up)

I got my Maran eggs today at about 1pm. I immediately opened them up, and set them out - pointy end down. I have my home grown eggs out with them now (they were in the basement to help keep them at a storage tempature of about 55-60F). They will be left out until 11 or 12 tonight. This will give them 8 or 9 hours of "sitting out" time. Some people like to set them out 24 hours... but these eggs were probrably laid on Monday or Tuesday. After 7 days they start to lose hatchability. So, I personally set them out for about 8-10 depending on the weather. It has been warm here the last couple days (about 50F - which is close to storage tempatures). Setting them out allows the egg to settle back to where it should be. If the eggs have not been roughed too much in shipping, the air sacks should not be comprimised, and we should still get a good hatch out of these. I'm always positive about this... I guess because I have never had a horrible hatch (so far).

I'll be back to post pictures and show how I arrange eggs in the turner. I have found that certain "spots" don't do as well... the ones near the motor of the turner. When you hatch back to back, you pick up on these things.

 

[tnchickenut]

Ok. Set the eggs. It is about 11:30pm when I set them. So it pretty much has been a exact 10 hours of setting them out at room temp.

I skipped the last row on the right just to avoid putting one next to the motor for the turner and keep it organized. If I had a full incubator I would have still not set one next to the motor (so I guess it wouldn't be a fully full incubator).

The darkest eggs are the ebay bought French Wheaten Maran's, the next ones over are my own Delaware's, and then the little white ones are the silver sebright's.

I think the biggest mistake people make at this point of the game is setting up the incubator to run at the proper temp (102F for this still air model (99.5F for fan models)) and then when they add the eggs the temp reads low for a few hours. This is because you added the much cooler eggs. If you stop to think about it, a mother hen starts to sit on eggs they don't jump to a high tempature. It takes time. The INTERNAL egg tempature is the tempature that causes the incubation process. So, it takes awhile for the incubator to warm up the internal egg tempature. Don't mess with the thermastat at this point (another advantage to setting eggs right before bed... you sleep and keep your hands off). You already ran the incubator for a day now at the right tempature... you just need to wait for it to warm up the eggs, and it will read right again.

Here is the picture of them just set.

Cheers! I'll be posting pictures of candling on day 7!! Stay tuned. Of course, if there is anything like tempature dips or spikes, I will post that too.

Oh, PS... I added a couple extra of my own eggs

Couldn't resist!

 

[tnchickenut]

Well, candled today (day 7).

All the sebrights look GREAT... see what doubling up on roos does?
My one particular Del flock isn't doing so well. I'm working on getting my roo in that flock motivated. Only two candled good.
And it's very hard to tell with the Marans since they are so dark, but they all look like they are good. None are obviously clear, so I left them for now.

Here is a picture of a very positively developing sebright egg....

and here is one of the "clear" Delaware eggs. If ever your eggs look anything other than this (and don't sweat or stink, that is)... leave them in.

Hope the pictures help. Alot of the time people ask "what do I look for". Well, now you know.

*** It is important for you to understand that sometimes FERTILE eggs, just don't develope. They will candle clear like the second picture. The only way to check if they were fertile and didn't develope or just infertile is to crack them open and look for the "bullseye". I will post about that tommarrow... as that is when I will be cracking the clear ones open to check about these.

 

[deek248]

 

[Mahonri]

 

[kid-n-chickens]

This is pretty cool, thanks for doing it!

 

[ParadisePoultry]

I am subscibed

 

[cluckcluck42]

I have two older hens who won't take the rooster, and they are messing up my fertility. They are going to be stew hens very soon and we are replacing them with our new pullets. They are pecking styrofoam off the side of the house, so I'm not all that sad about it. Just curious, when people complain of infertility, do you replace the eggs for them? Because of my two virginal hens I gave an egg buyer 5 extra ameraucana eggs and 6 more brown eggs. Does that seem fair?

Great thread, I'm subscribing.

 

[chkinut]

a question for tnchickenut......when u said you used a hygrometer from wal-mart....and it wasn't calibrated correctly, u said u just went back to the "old fashioned" way to measure humidity. could u please tell me what that entails? cuz i was gonna go to wal-mart today and buy one of those things.....but i'd like to hear your old fashioned method first. maybe i'd rather do that?

 

[leeandtina]

Quote:
thank you for doing this, it sure does help a newbie like me

i can't wait to see pics on this part so i know what we are looking at when this happens too!