Mahonri's 2nd Annual BYC EASTER HATCH. Post pics of your chicks!

[storminstaffs]

I candled a few nights ago and had

8/9 salmon faverolles - shipped eggs
3/6 cream legbar - local pickup and left in a warm car whilst doing some shopping
1/1 silkie mix - from my own flock, mam is a cochin silkie mix and dad is a pure silkie so i'm wondering whether it'll have silkie feathers or not.
6/16 or 18 can't which number now, orpington bantams black and chocolate, all the eggs from my pair that I put in only one developed from the 6 but it must have died early on, hopefully i'll still get something from the shipped eggs i bought though

 

[Mish]

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Warden, that is a beautiful bird.

 

[ChooksChick]

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You can find a bit about how I sand on this thread, https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=476616

As far as the broody goes, mine are usually stuck on broody-mode until they get to mother. Only once did a girl snap out of it, and that was a banty Cochin who's broody several times a year, and I tried to put chicks under her only a week in...and she wasn't ready and snapped out of it like a teenager with a newborn!

I would expect if you get the chicks out of there immediately, you could shove more eggs under her for a full round, but you need to check her muscle condition around her keel to make sure she's not losing too much nutrition/condition before putting her through another 3 weeks.

You could get some going for a couple of weeks overlapping, and let her finish them off, if the end is where you're losing your BCMs.

If you want any help, let me know!

Everything else hatches, but I find full term DIS chicks when I open the BCMs after a few days. Do I need a higher humidity for them or a lower one?

From now on I'm going to start sanding and see if that helps. Figures I have about 30 of them in the bator for various hatches.

I use as low a humidity as I can during incubation, and then I up it as high as it can go during hatch. They can't take on water during confinement, in my opinion, but higher humidity can halt the evaporation. That's accomplished by using paper towels as described in my Incubation Cheater. My take is that Marans shells are less capable of evaporating and I have often found that the DIS are accompanied by a lot of liquid, so I decided to try the suggestion to sand them. It worked well, so I've used that method with shipped eggs thereafter, particularly with very dark eggs. I don't use it for my eggs from my flock, because it doesn't seem to be as necessary if they haven't been shipped.

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And where do you keep your humidity, during confinement for the last 2.? days?

In general, the Incubation Cheater method I use to increase moisture makes the humidity 65-80% but I quit using a hygrometer long ago- I just follow the method and don't look anymore. If I get really good evaporation in the beginning, I can see that the air-cells are very large, and I'll know that the prevention of any more evaporation during confinement will allow them to not only keep enough moisture to move internally, but most importantly, it keeps them from becoming glued, which will occur if the air is dryer in confinement...as I just experienced on my forgotten batch which hatched in the turner in fully dry air...

I'm very fond of paper towels in the channels, with another on top of the wire- this gets moisture wicking up into the one on the wire which has massive surface area for evaporation because both sides are exposed. In a still air, this does fantastic. I just sit the eggs on the wet paper towel and they do great. Sometimes the incubator is super-full and there are some on the wire and some on the towel- there is no difference in hatch rates, regardless of whether they touch the wet towel or not.

I prefer an LG for hatching, and I use a different box than the incubation period, so I don't have to worry about the temperature change as the egg are lowered from the turner height to the wire height. In times when I had to use the same box, I propped up the wire on bowls of water so that the eggs stayed the same distance from the heating element.

I'm very fond of opening the incubator when I oughtn't, so I prefer the LG to the Hovabator because the Hova doesn't have the little windows that can be opened for quick access without massively impacting the humidity and temp of the whole unit. This often means burns on the hands from the heating element, but I deserve that!

Overall, I have to say nothing beats the Rcom, because you can open it all day and mess with whatever, plus it truly is set-and-forget and no change needs to be made for confinement, BUT- obviously the expense is huge, and I have had chicks get stuck because the fan is pretty powerful.

I really need a Sportsman or some homemade cabinet, but I enjoy staggered hatches so much I have a hatch a couple of times a week...so that would be hard to mitigate.

I maybe just need a line of rcoms...that would be fabulous if I wasn't poor.

 

[ChooksChick]

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I wish I could have your eggs in my incubator...

 

[yotetrapper]

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Not really. I have a huge, 600+ chicken egg Kuhl cabinet. I just pop the eggs in and then write on the side of the incubator with dry erase marker, when they come out, to go into lockdown. For example:

Shelf 1 - Easter Hatch - 4-20
Shelf 2 - Pheasant - 4-24
Shelf 3 - Quail - 5-2
Shelf 4 - Mille fleur +mine - 5-4

Then I just take them out and put them into one of my three, "hatchers". My hatchers are 2 hovabator genesis', and a homemade jobber. Goes alot smoother than you might think.

 

[SarahIrl]

Well, ducks all done, 10/10 hatched, 2 died within 24 hours (I suspect the parents aren't on fab feed) but here's swim lesson #1:

and duck carpet, see how many you can count....

and here is my entry for broody hen with chicks: "Line up in an orderly fashion, there is enough for everyone..."

 

[Mahonri]

Well, WORRY IS ABOUT TO SET IN!

I hate LOCKDOWN/confinement.

 

[ChooksChick]

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Chamomile tea with honey, my friend, and remember one thing: even as we struggle and worry, it is already set and Someone Else is in control. It will happen as it is supposed to, and if you remember that with joy, you will save yourself lots of stress...

Which will lower your cortisol levels and help your metabolism speed up and you'll be healthier. So there!

Seriously- breathe deep. It will be okay.

 

[daisychick]

SarahIrl: those are some cute pics you have there.

 

[SarahIrl]

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Thanks, I have to go through so many to find some without my little girls fingers/head/wellies in. She has decided this week she is mostly wearing wellies. Everywhere. (By wellies I mean galoshes)