Lock Down Trouble

What do you do? Chop up a favorite fruit, put it over a bowl of vanilla ice cream, and enjoy. Get ready for the excitement.

There is nothing magical about the Day 18 lockdown. A lot of people count the days wrong and lockdown a full day early without a problem. Being a day late is not a problem unless the eggs have started pipping. Even then, it’s usually not a problem.

The eggs really don’t need turning after about two weeks. The body parts have formed which is a big reason you need to turn early in incubation. A membrane has formed that keeps the chick from sticking to the inside of the egg shell. It does not hurt to turn the eggs after that, it’s just not necessary. The reason we traditionally stop turning at lockdown is convenience instead of some need.

The reason we raise the humidity at lockdown is that you want the humidity high enough so that membrane I mentioned above does not dry out and shrink wrap the chick when it pips. That’s not going to happen unless there is a hole in the shell for the moisture to escape. That’s not totally true. If the humidity is too low throughout the entire incubation period you can shrink wrap the chick with that membrane, but if that were to happen it would happen before lockdown. When you go into lockdown doesn’t have a significant effect on that. You just want to raise the humidity before they pip.

The real reason the three days before hatch for raising the humidity is used is that some eggs pip early, as much as three days. That’s happened to me before I tweaked the temperature on my incubator. When I went into lockdown I already had a couple of eggs pipping. They hatched fine.

Bottom line – it is extremely unlikely you have caused any problems going into lockdown late. Good luck with that hatch.

 

Very true. More than once I've moved eggs out of the turner as they are peeping and never had an issue.

 

I like the fruit part, but, if I were waiting for a hatch, I'd choose yogurt instead!

 

Thank you for this. I am a first timer, I set my first eggs ever 4 days ago so it was really nice to hear the information you posted! Thank you.