- Sep 12, 2012
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I can't say on quail eggs - I've never had any interest in them at all - but here's my advice from hatching chicken eggs for several years now that you might find useful:
Don't take them out of the egg turner. Mommy hen doesn't do it! She doesn't magically know when to stop turning her eggs. She's quite the opposite, wanting to constantly readjust them and get them just right (which they never will be) all the way up until the babies actually hatch. And even then, she starts adjusting the babies and where they are until they squeal at her for it. During the final days, she'll still get up and get food and water if she needs it. She doesn't starve herself like many people think. You probably just won't SEE her getting the food and water. Remember she's not only there to hatch the eggs, but to protect them too.
And in mimicking this, I've actually had a much HIGHER hatch rate when I leave the eggs in the turner. I've had absolutely NO eggs pip on the wrong end since doing that, either. That means no chicks drowning in their own fluids, and no torn blood vessels before they detach from the egg.
Also, lockdown is a joke for me. I'm CONSTANTLY putting new eggs in the incubators, almost every single day. And that means I'm getting chicks hatching every single day too. And because of that I'm reaching in to take chicks out, take shells out, move the eggs around so the oldest ones are up front, etc. I did recently invest in a second incubator, but only for the volume of eggs that I've got going in and out. I've got four new breeds that will begin laying this year, and I'm prepared to sell some chicks locally, so I got a second incubator to put more eggs in.
Unfortunately, that's about to change a bit as I got a surprise of GOOSE EGGS being delivered (that I paid for last year), so I'll need the second incubator for those. They're much larger so I'll probably need the entire incubator just for those eggs.
The only eggs that I really do set all at once, are eggs that are shipped in. But even then, I still add more if there is space, and I don't worry about cranking up humidity and temperature at the end either.
But then, can a hen magically change her body temperature and the humidity when she's setting eggs? No, so why do we?
Don't take them out of the egg turner. Mommy hen doesn't do it! She doesn't magically know when to stop turning her eggs. She's quite the opposite, wanting to constantly readjust them and get them just right (which they never will be) all the way up until the babies actually hatch. And even then, she starts adjusting the babies and where they are until they squeal at her for it. During the final days, she'll still get up and get food and water if she needs it. She doesn't starve herself like many people think. You probably just won't SEE her getting the food and water. Remember she's not only there to hatch the eggs, but to protect them too.
And in mimicking this, I've actually had a much HIGHER hatch rate when I leave the eggs in the turner. I've had absolutely NO eggs pip on the wrong end since doing that, either. That means no chicks drowning in their own fluids, and no torn blood vessels before they detach from the egg.
Also, lockdown is a joke for me. I'm CONSTANTLY putting new eggs in the incubators, almost every single day. And that means I'm getting chicks hatching every single day too. And because of that I'm reaching in to take chicks out, take shells out, move the eggs around so the oldest ones are up front, etc. I did recently invest in a second incubator, but only for the volume of eggs that I've got going in and out. I've got four new breeds that will begin laying this year, and I'm prepared to sell some chicks locally, so I got a second incubator to put more eggs in.
Unfortunately, that's about to change a bit as I got a surprise of GOOSE EGGS being delivered (that I paid for last year), so I'll need the second incubator for those. They're much larger so I'll probably need the entire incubator just for those eggs.
The only eggs that I really do set all at once, are eggs that are shipped in. But even then, I still add more if there is space, and I don't worry about cranking up humidity and temperature at the end either.
But then, can a hen magically change her body temperature and the humidity when she's setting eggs? No, so why do we?
