My first hatch, any tips or tricks?

RoosterHuggerLiz

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First time hatching eggs, they where placed in my incubator on the 12 of June, never done this before and I'm kinda freaked- I've raised plenty of chickens but I've always bought them at like 2 or 3 days old, I'm trying to hatch now because my fav hen passed and I'm hatching her baby's.. All in all the only one left is look in really heathy and strong, any advice??

Mostly what to do during the hatch and after its come out of its shell
 
Good luck with the hatch and I'm sorry about losing your favourite hen.

First the chick will pip into the air cell (internal pip) and then they take up to 24 hours to pip externally. They can be externally pipped for up to 24 hours before finally unzipping. Those stages are really important, firstly for the chick learning to breathe, and secondly for the remains of the yolk to be absorbed. Unzipping might take an hour at most. Let the chick dry off in the incubator before removing it.

You'll be glued to your incubator I'm sure. It's quite addictive, even though it will feel like the most stressful thing you've ever done. :lol:
 
You all for your advice! He came out beautifully! Sadly because he was a rooster I actually ended up giving him away but he has a great home now with 20 or so hens (my friend's old rooster had recently passed) but there was one little problem with the hatch- as soon as he pipped his shell, I could tell that he was going to have problems getting out. He actually ended up being shrink-wrapped due to the low humidity level in the incubator (I have literally one of the cheapest incubators you can buy, self turning and no humidity control whatsoever) so I actually ended up helping him out a little bit, not much though!! I sat there for about 6 and 1/2 hours using a paintbrush to try and hydrate the inner membrane as much as possible so he could rip through it himself, in the end he came out just fine and my friend who got him from me named him Charlie!!

(Oh and in the video I was using a paintbrush to give him water because he was still he was still really wobbly and kept falling into his water-- it had no paint on it because I had just bought it from the store for him and I thoroughly cleaned it without harmful chemicals prior to using it to give him water, the things he's eating are no gmo chia seeds because at that time I didn't have any Chick feed and I have actually used the substitute before on some of my younger chicks, especially when they're still wobbly like that the boost can really help)
 

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