My first attempt at hatching

[DonyaQuick]

Well I can already tell Dimple is not going to stay broody long. She's very alert and starting to eat more. I hope the other two eggs under her are hatched tomorrow.

Also, Dimple is hoarding the egg shell fragments like nesting material...should I remove those manually now or wait until she's off the nest?
EDIT: nevermind, I went ahead and removed the fragments. A couple had fairly pointy bits and she couldn't seem to get comfortable with them and there are two eggs left to hatch. I figured the chicks don't need to be poked by old shells either.

 

[DonyaQuick]

So both Dingus eggs hatched unexpected nearly white chicks and one Buddy egg hatched overnight and made a penguin more like what I expected.

There's still one Buddy egg unhatched under Dimple. No external pips yet as far as I can tell from brief glances as she shifts it. And one brown egg in the incubator is still noticably darkening.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Oh dear. Hatch #4 is not going entirely smoothly and it's crying at times as the process goes. Hard to tell, but I think it may have pipped in a weird place. It's opening a progressively larger round window rather than zipping a line around the shell like the other three did. It's around 80% humidity in the house so I don't think I need to worry about shrink wrapping and probably it's just going to take longer to open up its window large enough to get out.

 

[DonyaQuick]

#4 is out now. Despite the humidity I think either it was stuck due to being in a bad position or it was on the verge of getting shrink wrapped. After it was crying for a long time, I lifted Dimple slightly to took a look and it was trying really hard to force the shell apart with a foot and its beak but not making any progress and the opening was pretty small - just enough for the foot and beak really. The shell was practically crumbly but the membrane was really tough. I know some will disagree with this choice but I made a tiny little tear in it at the side of the opening where there didn't look to be any blood vessels and the chick was pushing so hard it popped the whole rest of the shell and membrane in half right there in my palm. Maybe it would have gotten there on its own, but also maybe not since the humidity is now dropping steadily. Anyway, I put it straight back under Dimple to dry off and recover. Hopefully it will be fine. It looks like another light colored one.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Well yesterday evening was...eventful lol. I think this picture pretty much captures how Dimple was doing. She reaaaally needed a nap after managing 3 bouncy kids that wanted to run around and one newly hached chick that needed to stay under her.

And eventually she took a nap...and broody pooped in the nest in her sleep. That of course woke her up and sent her into uh-oh mode trying to figure out what to do. Fortunately she it didn't get on any of the chicks, but I had to take them and her out of there and clean it up.

This morning has also made me realize that having a super friendly broody is going to be an awesome cheat for having friendly chicks. I thought it was going to be the other way around and I'd have to work harder to earn the chicks' trust later on since Dimple is the mama rather than me. However, now that they're all hatched she just brings them to me and encourages them to climb on me to come have a group hug.

Still got that one brown egg in the incubator looking promising. I've turned off the auto rotator and will keep checking it. Maybe I'll get lucky and it'll just be a few days behind and I can still sneak it into the group with the others.

EDIT: oh, I forgot - chick #4 is doing good today!

 

[DonyaQuick]

It'll be easy for me to tell which chicks came from which hen as they grow I think. Buddy made the penguin and her white chick is rapidly getting gray on it, whereas the Dingus babies are still all white. I'm placing my bet now that the penguin chick is a cockerel based on being a bold, nippy little devil lol. Look at this sassy little beast. It knows it just bit my toe and is proud of it.

And here's the other Buddy chick getting some wing color with the other two white ones behind.

And finally, it's back to looking like false hopes of mine on that brown egg. I do think I got some more development going in it once it was in the incubator, but I don't think it went very far and must have well and truly quit. Meanwhile, my rooster is making some progress with his attempts to woo Chungus, so hopefully I can put my incubator to good use with a few of her eggs once the current chicks are a little older so I don't have to juggle brooding/integration resources too much. I'd also like for it to be getting cooler on average when I do another round of brown Chungus eggs, since I doubt I will have another broody then and will just be doing the incubator method. Because Dimple's broodiness decided the timing of this hatch, I'm stuck keeping her in the house during the current heat wave. The end of that heat wave keeps getting pushed back...weather report has been teasing me with cooler temperatures "tomorrow" for several days in a row now so I think Dimple and her little floofs are going to be indoors for a while yet. Feels like I'm sticking my head in the incubator when I go outside. I keep having to hose down my run outside to make cool ground for my adult flock to go stand on. Hopefully setting the next batch in August and hatching in September won't be too late for my climate.