My first attempt at hatching

[junior67]

Since Dimple has a weird thing about not pooping in her enclosure and I don't want to add shavings over the tarp until after the hatch, I gather I need to stop giving her daily outings on day 19 - is that right? Today is day 16, so two more daily outings for her I guess.

The reason I haven't added shavings by the way is I didn't want her over-filling the box or trying to make another nest elsewhere and move the eggs (she'd done this in the coop before I brought her in the house). After the hatch I won't have to worry about that anymore.

Not sure if it is right but my 2 that each hatched an egg got off the nest and went out even after an external pip. The chicks hatched fine

 

[chickfused]

Mama hen knows what to do. Just leave her be and don't change anything.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Lockdown starts today...and I'm pretty sure Dimple is talking to her eggs.

I removed the brown eggs and put them in the incubator. I didn't just toss them because, to my surprise, two in particular look darker and the dark mass has largely stopped moving when the egg is shifted. I'm wondering if maybe they ended up not being warm enough the first week; maybe it was a mistake for me to do 8 with little Dimple and I should have stuck to 6. Either way, the light eggs look ready to go and I'd like Dimple to get back to eating normally as quickly as possible rather than letting her stay broody waiting on iffy eggs given there will be some chicks to take care of soon.

 

[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]

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.