Lockdown?

[ChicknManCNY]

Ok so I'm extremely new to chickens really still waiting on my first chicks to arrive(4-4) but have been loving this site it's truly a wonderful thing. I don't plan on hatching eggs but I'm very curious to what lockdown is and means, I know it says in the sticky to leave the bator closed as much as possible but why and for how long? Would a hen not leave the nest at day 18 until the eggs hatched?

 

[mrsp523]

Hi

im new at all this too. We are on our first hatch ~ our first born just arrived tonight at day 20

. Lock down is when you stop turning them, make sure the humidity is good, and not open the incubator. This is on day 18. My husband has been arguing the same about the perfection of it ~ how temps vary outside, and doesnt mother hen get up from time to time. Someone told me that mother hen will turn her eggs up to 500 times a day before her lock down begins. (not sure of the truth to that, but its what I was told.) We have done good this last year with our girls that we bought as chicks last Spring, it has been a joy to have them around. I too love reading these threads from other folks that know so much more than me.

 

[gryeyes]

Once the hen on the eggs begins to sense the chicks readying for hatch, she hardly leaves the nest. Early in her "confinement" she leaves every day or so for a time to poop, drink, eat, maybe take a dust bath, catch some rays, stretch her legs, etc. The last few days, when the chicks are positioning themselves to hatch, and the eggs move, and when they cheep, she tends to them much more closely, talking to them, moving them around, settling down over them, and may not leave the nest at all.

Humans, not being able to fit on nests without squashing the eggs, have developed alternate methods of hatching fertile eggs: the electric incubator! Replicating what goes on under a broody hen is very difficult. So, for the last three days, we try not to introduce too many variables by "locking down" the incubator. The eggs are no longer turned, the humidity is raised, and we keep our hands off the eggs.

 

[ChicknManCNY]

Mother Nature is absolutely Amazing isn't she!!?? Thanks for the responses! I love learning about the proccesses involved in chicken rearing/owning/raising