Well, believe it or not we had another chick hatch from our hatch-a-long eggs early this morning. Yesterday I was getting ready to clean out the incubator and toss the remaining eggs and found one had pipped. I tapped it and the little fella chirped! So i left them in over night and right after I got up, there he was! He's a cross between my barred rock hens and my red cochin...wonder what he will look like? So that brings my total hatched to 9. Hey! That also means I had a 50% hatch rate...not bad for a first time hatch
However, I have had several hatch with leg issues and I am pretty sure that it must have been caused by something during incubation. I have found lots of things saying it COULD be caused by conditions during incubation, but I cant find anything saying WHAT those conditions may be. I have another batch of eggs to set, and want to try and figure it out before I set them so today is research research research I guess! I also have read up on "dry" hatching and have decided thats what I am going to do for the next round.