Little Giant Incubator Tricks

[Arielle]

I let them sit for 24 hours in the turner but off before turning it on. These were expensive eggs, and I wanted to give them every chance.I have better luck with 5-7 days of no turning.

I candled at 7 days and then at 18 to pull whatever hadn't developed from the day 7 candling. My dad never candled until day 18, so I'm cool with not candling a lot. Honestly, the air cells looked great.THe purpose of candling is to verify the humidity in the LG as many factors effect the drying of the eggs.

I have the auto Lg turner. It worked perfectly. I leave one plug and cover half the other with tape, or the temp and RH really fluctuate. I keep eggs away from the motor as it increases temperature by a degree nearby. Good.

The RH was excellent between 35-40 the whole time until the last 3 days. I had trouble boosting it. I added cups under the wire in addition to filling the wells via my set up shown eariluer , I added sponges, and I resorted to squirting water through the holes onto paper towels I had lined it with to keep the chick mess contained. it still would drop within hours, and I had one panic-stricken day on Tuesday where I babysat it and added water to keep it at 65 every couple of hours after it had done well the day before.My eggs often hatchi in the hatcher because I forget to move them sometimes with staggared hatches. Both turkey and chicken have hatched at 35%RH.

I actually have two LG, but I forgot to set the second one, the hatcher, up because I worked a 48 hour shift last weekend and came home to eggs ready for lockdown! Oops.

The eggs came from 2 sources, 2 different breeds (Swedish Flower Hens and Dark and Light Brahmas). They had very fast transit and were both packed beautifully. The light Brahmas were all Clears, the darks looked great, the SFH looked iffy to me as far as fertility goes.Fast is not always better. I had one shipment take FIVE days--they really handwalked to point to point, no belts, no tumblers. Good hatch rate, too. Fast transit can mean the box went into the tumbler.

We have to use AC here. It's a million degrees and lots of ambient RH. We would die of heat exhaustion! My family would riot if I said no AC.AC is fine if you account for it. I didn't use it in July and had drown chicks; Used dehumidifier and had better hatches in AUgust.

Fan is installed per LG directions, and I don't put eggs under it. Is it blowing ON the eggs? If so turn it to blow AWAY.

I had it sitting on a box to allow air flow through all the lower holes, as I felt last time maybe there wasn't enough air.Mine is on the box, too. LOL As the box started to sag I place "feet" under the feet.

Temperature was very even this time, much better than for my first hatch (local eggs, and I got 100% from the ones that made it to lockdown). Just the two small spikes, one down and one up. Short lived, but there they were.Good!

Can't find the rotten one, but I float tested them. They are all dead. I am thinking about opening up a few, once I get some peace and quiet from these kids! I'm thinking they may have died just prior to lockdown.Look at the university sites for reasons why they might have died just before lockdown.

I'm so discouraged. I can't keep spending money on eggs. My hope was to get enough of my own and then use broodies, but I can't even get to that point. I think I got three roosters from my first SFH eggs.My last effort hatching black copper marans from 2 sources netted FIVE roosters and zero hens. I figure it gives me more choices for breeding. You just some girls. Temperatures a little on the hotter side favor the development of the girl eggs. Cooler temps favor the male eggs.

Trying again with a BYcer's eggs, but they will be shipped. Nobody local has SFH. Even the guy in PA is basically a day's drive up and a day back.SHipping a longer distance using a plane is much nicer to the eggs. If you an wait for the cool weather that helps too ( rooster fertility). I shipped to west coast and lady had a very good hatch from my marans eggs. TRY again. Shipped eggs are a challenge. If you want very good breeding stock it can be worth the price of shipped trio.

DO NOT write EGGS on the box.

Get a shipment that requires a plane ride Not by truck the whole way. ALSO find out the routing. My last shipment of eggs went all over the place before arriving at the customers because the USPS shut down a local sorting facitlity.

 

[Peep_Show]

I have a very small, very buzzy computer fan that I installed in an upper corner of my bator (installation instructions came from a site on BYC). The **only** time I turn it on is when hatch is well underway and it gets too drippy humid in there. It is not pointed down on the eggs, but lateral across the top side of the incubator. Red plugs are then opened and the fan goes on, but only for a short period of time as it dissipates the humidity pretty darn fast.. Otherwise, I'd consider it a still air hatch.

I've got an auto egg turner. I do not put an egg in the spot closest to it, nor under the thermostat and dangling wires (so out about four potential eggs). I do stuff the hole where the turner cord goes out with wadded up tissue to prevent drafts. Seriously, I do not open the red plugs except for at hatches. I live in the desert (2% to maybe 20% humidity) and it would suck all the moisture outta the box in no time flat. Once I forgot to fill the water trays until about the 6th day....luckily the only ill after-effects were rather large air spaces and I still got a 87% hatch rate on shipped eggs.

I have pre-lockdown three thermometers: One on the floor of the bator, one that rides on top of the eggs, and one off to the side (which is the only digital one and also reads the humidity). At lockdown I put in a non-digital thermometer with a humidity read mechanism on it to replace the floor thermometer. I feel that I can get a pretty good read of the ambient (mean) temps of the eggs. At top is close to 101 and at the bottom usually is 99, so eggs theorhetically are 100 degrees.

I learned the hard way not to rely on digital thermometers as I had one that -- unbeknownst to me -- got set to read only the daily high and lows. Trying to adjust the temperature I inadvertently spiked my eggs up to 106...oops!

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No one knows really what makes an egg go bad, but perhaps it (your smelly egg) contaminated the other eggs with egg-killing bacteria? I diagnostic candle at 7 days (head count, as it were) and candle/cull at 10 days with a final culling at lockdown. So far have been blessed with no exploders, even with the hard to read Marans eggs. Lid comes off the incubator once a day for sniff check and water tray filling (takes no more than a few minutes and kind of mimics the hen doing a food+water run) and a quick sniff test has detected the bad ones as early as 3 days.

Sorry you've had some bad luck with your hatches. Hopefully practice makes perfect!

 

[Arielle]

Thank you for sharing your detailed experience in the desert environment. THe LG is amazing how adaptable it is for a very inexpensive incubator.

 

[cmom]

Try running some locally fertile eggs (maybe from a friend). That way maybe you can determine if it is because of the eggs being shipped or not. I have much better results with my own eggs rather than shipped eggs. I have nearly 100% hatch rate. I used to use my LG for incubating but now I have a cabinet incubator but I still use my LGs and Hova-Bators as hatchers. Now that I have my breeding pens set up too my hatches have been better with my own eggs. Maybe you can find the breeds you want at a show. I started out with shipped eggs and had rather poor hatches but enough hatched and luckily I had mostly pullets hatch out. I bought a show quality cockerel at a show. I eventually put them a breeding pen and gave them some good higher protein poultry feed so I would have nice strong chicks hatch. Of the chicks you think are dead, I would open an egg and see if I could figure out why. Once I thought I had some dead chicks too. I opened an egg and to my surprise the chick was alive but it wasn't developed enough to live but I wanted to know.

These chicks are from my birds. I do staggered hatches.

 

[SunnySkies]

I did get 100% from local eggs.

I'll break open eggs tonight. My kids begged me to give the eggs until Saturday, but I work weekends, so I won't have time, and I don't want them hanging around if they aren't going to hatch.

I'll give things a thought and set it back up. I have eggs arriving second week of September. If that doesn't work, I'm shelving until spring.

 

[SunnySkies]

Necropsied two. Perfectly formed and positioned chicks. No odor. Quite a lot of yold sac left. Membranes seemed maybe a bit tough but there seemed to be a normal amount of fluid in the egg around the chick. Maybe a heat spike killed them all and the one escaped because he was pipping? I dunno. I got some eggs froma friend today and will set them to see if I can work out what went wrong so Latin the game.

 

[cmom]

I have my humidity during incubation around 35% to 40% and at lockdown around 75%. I keep my temp just above the eggs at 100 degrees. If the humidity or temp fluctuate a little, I don't worry too much. My broody's will get off their nests for a little while to eat, drink and poop. Since I have been doing it like this my hatches have been close to 100%. I have had 100% hatches but most are between 90% and 95%. I used to candle at day 10, but now I don't candle until I take the eggs out of the turner on day 18 to set them for hatching. Once in awhile I will pull a some eggs out around day 10 to 12 to check. I toss any definite quitters and infertile eggs out when I check on day 18. I mark the questionable ones. I have had some I thought were quitters but not sure as they didn't look to be as developed and I have had some of my marked eggs hatch. They usually hatch a day or 2 late but I have had marked eggs hatch. Originally I incubated at around 50% humidity and at lockdown at around 70% and my hatches were around 60%, but since I started dry incubation my hatches went up considerably. I do use the plugs to help adjust the temp and humidity. Sometimes I don't take the plugs out if I have trouble keeping the humidity up during lockdown. I have never had problems with air flow as the fan will draw in air through the little holes and it is enough for the chicks. A still air incubator is a different story. I converted my still airs to circulated air. I definitely have had better hatches also with the circulated air. Good luck with your new eggs...

 

[Arielle]

I did get 100% from local eggs.

I'll break open eggs tonight. My kids begged me to give the eggs until Saturday, but I work weekends, so I won't have time, and I don't want them hanging around if they aren't going to hatch.

I'll give things a thought and set it back up. I have eggs arriving second week of September. If that doesn't work, I'm shelving until spring.

My first thought was perhaps they needed MORE air circulation. THe larger the chick grows the more oxygen they need. ANd when they internally pip, the oxygen level increases again. Of course, if the the incubator is FULL the more oxygen needed. I know of many people that leave the plugs out, both plugs out, 100% of the time.

I hatch turkeys and can get the humidity up to 80+% for hatching. At his high moisture level Porter's turkeys recommends a temp reduction. Moisture effects the oxygen content of the air; higher moisture means less oxygen. When hatching just chickens, I raise the moisture to50-60%, what ever keeps the membranes from drying once a chick has pipped.

I have also noted that when chick are vibrant and vigorous, the pip and zip very quickly so the higher RH is no longer important. THis is how I know: I once had about 7 chicks pip and zip overnight in my incubator. OOPs. I had not moved them to the LG hatcher with higher moisture levels. As I said, higher moisture plays a part when hey are slow to zip.

DId you look at the univerisity sites to find reasons for dying at about 18 days??

 

[cmom]

I have had chicks too that have hatched in my incubator. I had forgot which day I had put them in the incubator. They hatched out fine.

 

[SunnySkies]

I looked at the sites, and none of the causes seem to really match except maybe a temperature problem or a humidity problem. So I set some brown barnyard mix eggs this evening. I set it up last night in the basement, where it wants to be 22% RH and 99-100 degrees. So I added a bit of water and we will see.

Fan blows air up and out of the bator. So it is not blowing on the eggs.

I set it up a bit higher than last time to further increase air. I had it sitting last time where all the holes were open on the bottom, but maybe it still needed more somehow.

I've been shooting for an RH of 35-40%, temp of 100 and then the last three days were problemaxtic. Even with sponges, small cups, misting water in, keeping the plugs in, I had a very difficult time keeping RH up. And the one chick that did hatch came 18 hours after lockdown started. Ugh.

Eggs are sitting on the right side under the window. Well away from the turned motor and the thermostat itself. I have a digital hygrometer and thermometer and tossed a second thermometer in there too, even though I know that particular thermometer is off by several degrees (came with the bator, and it sucks).

I am going to be overrun with mixed breed chicks at this rate.