Multi breeder hatching thread.... Hatch-Along

[Derrick]

Tonight I candle the eggs..... We will see...

 

[Derrick]

Tonight I candle the eggs..... We will see...

 

[Derrick]

I did the candled the eggs. The results are not great. Maryland eggs. 1 BLRW made it. 4 Mystery eggs made it. 5 Americauna eggs made it.

California eggs. 8 BLRW made it.

Georgia eggs. 14 Americauna eggs made it. 3 OE Made it.

Soooooo. Maryland did not do well.... The rest did ok so far. The good news is I had room for the new eggs. My friend took 10 or so to his house to incubate them with his granddaughters.... I have space for 12 more in one of my incubators.... Hmmmmmmm. Should I order more...

 

[Sazbaby]

Aw, total bummer. With results like that, as well as my one shipped-eggs experience, I don't know if I'll ever get up the nerve to try them shipped again... but glad you had room open up so no eggs went to waste!!

My bator is running pretty good, my only concern is that the humidity is so low... I am sticking with the directions of just filling the one inner trough, but today the humidity went low enough that one of my meters is just saying "lo." I'm tempted to add water to the other trough but I'm really trying to just stick with the game plan set out by GQF... :/ I suppose it has some dependency on the humidity of the room air too though, so I am not quite sure how they can make standard directions without allowing for such variation...

Well, I'm convinced again that my second silkie is going broody... I saw her go onto the nest this afternoon after being off it all day, so I threw a bunch of eggs in there... she puffed and made the broody sound and tucked the eggs underneath... a few hours later she was off the nest. She did go to "bed" quite early today, about 4 hours before sunset, so I'm hoping it's for real... She and most of my other silkies are really bad about wanting to sleep in the nest boxes and pretty much refuse to use my perches, so it's hard to tell if she's broody for sure or just turning in for the night! So here's what I'm doing... I bought 4 Dorking hatching eggs this morning, so I put those 4 as well as 4 silkie eggs under my first broody hen who is absolutely broody. I put 3 remaining silkie eggs (along with the 3 fake eggs that were already there) under the second possibly-broody hen... My plan is to see how it pans out with the second broody... if she is definitely going to commit, I'm going to leave things as-is for now. When the bator chicks start hatching, I'm going to candle the hens' eggs and put all the viable hatching eggs under the second hen (since she's been broody most recently and will ride out the extra incubation for the eggs I set today), and will put chicks from the bator under the hen who started going broody a few days after I started the bator. I figured this way I could let the hens set on a larger number of eggs between the two of them compared to one silkie alone, and am counting on not all making it, so when I shift the eggs to the one hen there will be plenty of space. If they all are viable, it would end up being 4 small standard eggs, and 7 silkie eggs total... I *think* one of my hens could swing it alone, but not positive!

I know I'm thinking this out waaaaay too much and that usually means it's not going to work out the way I want it to!! lol At least the flexibility will be there to let the 2 hens brood chicks even if my new eggs fail because I've put too many out there... We are just having too much fun with chicks to not go for as many as we can possibly fit!! lol

 

[Derrick]

If your worried about the humidity, cut a small piece of a well rinsed sponge and stick it in the trough. The size of the sponge will determine the humidity . Be careful though. A sponge will raise the humidity big time. I'm in florida and the humidity in the room that the incubator is in is about 45-50%

 

[Conchis]

I candled this week-end and it looks pretty good so far!!!

 

[Derrick]

Awesome!

 

[Sazbaby]

Exciting on the duck eggs!!!

I kept meaning to come back and post about the humidity... after I wrote that post, I went in and looked again, and what I had done is mistaken a watermark in the trough for actual water- I thought it was still half full, but it was bone dry! I didn't realize it until I accidentally bumped the bator the slightest bit and didn't see the water move... then I realized... THAT'S why the humidity is too low!!! (Doh!) So I filled it to the brim and now the humidity is back up in the mid 40s... I'm a bit relieved... Glad it only ran out for a day or so before I figured it out...

Everything is looking hunky dory on this end, bator is happy and steady, both silkies are brooding in the most excellent way, and all eggs are well covered from what I can tell! Can't wait until Thursday night to candle again...

Question: will I be able to tell anything different between the last candling and now? I mean, if they were all viable last week, am I going to see anything different if something has died along the way? At the first candling, it's pretty easy, either there's something there or not... but now, there will be something there regardless of whether it's viable or not... does that make any sense? I'm hoping to weigh them again as well as mark air sacs on the ones I can see... any advice for a noob?

 

[Derrick]

I'm not sure that you will be able to tell if you have a late stopper. If the chick stopped on day 7 or so, you can tell. Here is a link to pictures of the different days.


https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...g-candling-pics-progression-though-incubation

 

[Sazbaby]

Thanks a bunch for the link to the images, that's really helpful!

Candled tonight, as it is day 14 now, and I'm pretty positive the one I thought was a dud on the first candling is indeed a dud, but I can't quite throw it out yet. I have a second egg that I'm not sure about, at the first candling I was pretty confident I saw vessels, but it definitely doesn't look as far along as the remaining eggs. The other 15 are very dark, lots of thick vessels visible, and on many of them, I saw movement which is SOOOO exciting!!!! For now I'm leaving the two questionable ones in there... what are the chances they will explode if no good? I've heard horror stories about that, but don't know how it really happens, as I've never had an egg explode under a hen... Did have one left in a nest after hatching, and when I went to crack the duds open and explore what was in them, the one egg did sort of pop when I tapped it to break the shell, a bit explosive, but I don't think it would have done that without me trying to crack it open... is there any harm in leaving these two questionable ones in there? I figure if I get to day 18 with them and all the other eggs are pretty much dark and these still look like they just have a dark spot floating around, I'll leave them out... advice?

Also found it interesting the range of weight loss on the eggs. Lowest was around 6.25% and highest was 18.75%!!! Holy cow that's a range... seems a bit steady as far as which eggs are on the low end and the same egg had the record high. Average overall is 10.34% which I guess is pretty good for 2/3 of the way done? Humidity is still reading around 45% on one meter and 55% on the other, and I'm still just keeping the one trough filled... guess I'm going to wait another 4 days!!!

On a separate note, my two broodies are still chugging along... Checked on them today and saw an egg peeking out from under one of them... thought "oh no, I've given her too many eggs" and went to take the visible egg and donate it to the other hen, who has fewer eggs under her. When I retrieved it, I saw that it was a full size brown egg... I didn't set any full sized brown eggs under them!!! I have one hen in my layer flock who gets out of our netting every morning and goes back in for bedtime, spends the whole day out being naughty by herself. She had been coming into the silkie's coop which is also open during the day, and laying her egg in one of the nesting boxes. So, I guess she liked the crates I have the silkies in better... picked up one hen to check her eggs out, and sure enough, a second big brown egg. Picked up the second hen to check and a THIRD daggone egg. So the one little hen had TWO extraneous big eggs under her, and I am just hoping and praying that the second one was laid today and the important eggs didn't get overly chilled with the crowding... The other hen I'm not so worried about, but the eggs under her are not as important!!! Great, another thing to stress out over... lol Guess I'll have to check under them every day now to be sure... they're gonna love that. I would just leave the coop closed, but the rooster likes to get out during the day, and I see the hens out every now and then stretching their legs and scratching for bugs, so I hate to leave them closed up but still...