Managing 2 sets, 1 incubator

[bocephus]

My turkey hens like to leave the barn and go broody in random spots. I found one of those spots about a week ago. It appears today that she abandoned the nest. I found one egg broken open with a underdeveloped young chick a couple hundred yards away. I candled all the eggs and they all looked dark so I figured rotten eggs. Broke it open to find a live chick the same age as the broken egg I found.

So I took the last of the eggs and stuck them in my incubator. Problem is I already have a batch of eggs going in there. How do I deal with two different hatch dates? I'm guessing I'll have to pull the auto rotator since I don't know how old the abandoned eggs are and just rotate them all manually every day? Maybe mark each batch with a sharpie to know who's who also.

I can put up a picture of the chick from the egg I broke open if anyone wants to guess the age. It's pretty well feathered and still has a yolk sack with it that's a little bigger than the chick.

 

[bocephus]

I decided to get a 2nd incubator. So now the only issue is when to stop turning them. Looking at the chicken embryo development charts I'd be somewhere between 15 and 17 days, except these are turkeys which hatch after 28 days, not 21.

I'm going to have the 2nd incubator set up tomorrow, think I could just stop turning them at that point?

 

[sfh11]

Don't have any experience with turkeys, but could you not candle them and when you see they have broke through the airsack move them to the hatcher and quit turning? When I find abandoned chicken eggs, this is what I do.

 

[bocephus]

Do you turn yours manually? Wondering if it makes any difference that in the nest they were on there side but in the egg turner the small end faces downwards.

 

[bocephus]

Update, I took a guess at the age and put them in the 2nd incubator without a turner about 6 days ago. Today for the first one has hatched, another one has cracked it's shell a little and we occasionally see the other eggs move. So it seems to have worked although I was a couple days early on getting rid of the turner.