ChibaPet
In the Brooder
- Jun 1, 2025
- 8
- 35
- 24
Hi all.
I've kept chickens for years - not well when I was a kid, but with great care and success over the last decade. Our hens are supervised free range girls. We don't have roosters at present as we've not had good experiences, but we want to try them again.
We were going to buy more chicks to expand the flock from eight to fifteen or sixteen, but it's hard to find them this year, so we decided we'd try our hand at incubating eggs. We've raised all our other hens from day-old and we've never lost one while they were growing. We've lost a few to predators over the years and their coop (a converted potting shed) is kind of like an electrified Fort Knox now, and they don't go outside without at least one person out with them, making sure they're safe while they forage in our wooded backyard or while they take sunbaths or dust/dirtbaths. We love our girls and they're more pets than working birds, and they have come to expect lots of attention and treats from us - and to show their gratitude they give us amazing eggs.
We bought "Smart Chicken Incubators for Hatching Eggs with Automatic Turner Small Poultry Duck Quail 12 Egg Incubator Temperature Control Display Hatcher Machine (M12 Pro)" from Wayfair, and it sounded good, and I figured that at $165 I wasn't cheaping out. Once we had it set up, we got a dozen supposedly fertilized Rhode Island Red eggs from a local farm.
There were a couple obvious failures on our part: The incubator said to take out the turning apparatus on day 18, and we took it out on day 17 because we mistakenly thought it was from the day the eggs were laid - we drove them home and put them in a day after they were laid. Also, we were afraid to let them get chilled, so we mostly didn't candle them early, except for maybe once in the first week.
The incubator said it was keeping a steady 100°F thoughout, only barely dipping down when we would open it up to candle an egg. (The candler light was really weak so we ended up using flashlights.) The humidity was mostly 60% up to day 18-19 and then we moved to 70%. They were turning on whatever schedule the thing imposes - it seemed like it was every couple hours, but I didn't time it. We kept them in our bedroom so they'd have a peaceful environment around them.
Several days ago one of the eggs didn't look right and we took it out - it stank. When day 21 hit we were excited, but nothing happened. One of the eggs was pushing out some fluid that would dry through its pores. Reading about that here suggested that it was rotting and expanding out, and that was the case. We candled everyone and saw darkness in half the eggs. Today is day 22, and still nothing. We'd tried warm water in a bowl to see if they moved at all, and no one did. We went through and candled everyone carefully, and we opened all the shells that were passing light easily. They seemed mostly unfertilized, although most of them didn't smell. There may have been a couple fertilized eggs that never started. Then we candled the eggs that were hard to see through. We saw no details that seemed to indicate movement or blood vessels in any. We figured they were dead. One was just a super dark yolk but no developed chicken at all, leaving two prospects. One of the two was rotting and smelled terrible, and there was enough mass there that clearly a little chicken started to develop and failed.
The terribly sad event was the last egg. We could see nothing in it, but we couldn't hear anything and there was no movement. We carefully started opening it, and the membrane was white and solid and not clinging to the baby, so we don't think she (he?) was shrinkwrapped, but she was dead. We took her all the way out as she was clearly not alive, and she was a perfect little thing. Pretty beak, nice eyes, feathers - but dead. I apologize for this as it's sad, but I need to know what happened and I'm attaching a photo we took of her.
We really want advice. We now know we need to candle earlier and often, or at least we're assuming we need to to remove unfertilized eggs. Reading that mother hens will leave the eggs for up to half an hour at a time gave us courage as we figured taking them out for a minute to candle them wouldn't chill them too much. But what happened to this perfect little chicken? Did bacteria spread? There wasn't a terrible smell as none of the eggs had cracked - even the bad ones. Is the incubator we bought simply trash? Did we make some terrible error that impacted the whole batch? We started with a dozen eggs, and while half clearly were *not* fertilized, at least a couple were and started, and one looks like for all the world she should be running around cheeping in the brooder we built.
Thank you in advance for helping us understand this. We want to try again, but I want to go in with more information and ideally know what we did wrong. I'll buy another/better incubator if that was the primary issue. If it was a range of issues I want to know them all.
We've buried the little one in the image near one of our gardens and hope she rests peacefully.
I've kept chickens for years - not well when I was a kid, but with great care and success over the last decade. Our hens are supervised free range girls. We don't have roosters at present as we've not had good experiences, but we want to try them again.
We were going to buy more chicks to expand the flock from eight to fifteen or sixteen, but it's hard to find them this year, so we decided we'd try our hand at incubating eggs. We've raised all our other hens from day-old and we've never lost one while they were growing. We've lost a few to predators over the years and their coop (a converted potting shed) is kind of like an electrified Fort Knox now, and they don't go outside without at least one person out with them, making sure they're safe while they forage in our wooded backyard or while they take sunbaths or dust/dirtbaths. We love our girls and they're more pets than working birds, and they have come to expect lots of attention and treats from us - and to show their gratitude they give us amazing eggs.
We bought "Smart Chicken Incubators for Hatching Eggs with Automatic Turner Small Poultry Duck Quail 12 Egg Incubator Temperature Control Display Hatcher Machine (M12 Pro)" from Wayfair, and it sounded good, and I figured that at $165 I wasn't cheaping out. Once we had it set up, we got a dozen supposedly fertilized Rhode Island Red eggs from a local farm.
There were a couple obvious failures on our part: The incubator said to take out the turning apparatus on day 18, and we took it out on day 17 because we mistakenly thought it was from the day the eggs were laid - we drove them home and put them in a day after they were laid. Also, we were afraid to let them get chilled, so we mostly didn't candle them early, except for maybe once in the first week.
The incubator said it was keeping a steady 100°F thoughout, only barely dipping down when we would open it up to candle an egg. (The candler light was really weak so we ended up using flashlights.) The humidity was mostly 60% up to day 18-19 and then we moved to 70%. They were turning on whatever schedule the thing imposes - it seemed like it was every couple hours, but I didn't time it. We kept them in our bedroom so they'd have a peaceful environment around them.
Several days ago one of the eggs didn't look right and we took it out - it stank. When day 21 hit we were excited, but nothing happened. One of the eggs was pushing out some fluid that would dry through its pores. Reading about that here suggested that it was rotting and expanding out, and that was the case. We candled everyone and saw darkness in half the eggs. Today is day 22, and still nothing. We'd tried warm water in a bowl to see if they moved at all, and no one did. We went through and candled everyone carefully, and we opened all the shells that were passing light easily. They seemed mostly unfertilized, although most of them didn't smell. There may have been a couple fertilized eggs that never started. Then we candled the eggs that were hard to see through. We saw no details that seemed to indicate movement or blood vessels in any. We figured they were dead. One was just a super dark yolk but no developed chicken at all, leaving two prospects. One of the two was rotting and smelled terrible, and there was enough mass there that clearly a little chicken started to develop and failed.
The terribly sad event was the last egg. We could see nothing in it, but we couldn't hear anything and there was no movement. We carefully started opening it, and the membrane was white and solid and not clinging to the baby, so we don't think she (he?) was shrinkwrapped, but she was dead. We took her all the way out as she was clearly not alive, and she was a perfect little thing. Pretty beak, nice eyes, feathers - but dead. I apologize for this as it's sad, but I need to know what happened and I'm attaching a photo we took of her.
We really want advice. We now know we need to candle earlier and often, or at least we're assuming we need to to remove unfertilized eggs. Reading that mother hens will leave the eggs for up to half an hour at a time gave us courage as we figured taking them out for a minute to candle them wouldn't chill them too much. But what happened to this perfect little chicken? Did bacteria spread? There wasn't a terrible smell as none of the eggs had cracked - even the bad ones. Is the incubator we bought simply trash? Did we make some terrible error that impacted the whole batch? We started with a dozen eggs, and while half clearly were *not* fertilized, at least a couple were and started, and one looks like for all the world she should be running around cheeping in the brooder we built.
Thank you in advance for helping us understand this. We want to try again, but I want to go in with more information and ideally know what we did wrong. I'll buy another/better incubator if that was the primary issue. If it was a range of issues I want to know them all.
We've buried the little one in the image near one of our gardens and hope she rests peacefully.
