- Apr 1, 2012
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You know, it is actually funny but I have found that I am a whole lot more calm than I thought I would be about this incubation.Ah well, you know that they say about old habits.
I was wondering if maybe those Orpingtons just produced eggs that tended to either be more porous or just appear more porous as they are the lightest colored eggs I received. If any of these beauties hatch and I get some Orpington eggs of my own, you can bet I will be candling them regularly to see what the normal is for my chickens.
Thank you for the input about my candling pictures. In all, there are only a few I have found that have what appears to be extreme porosity (real word?) at the large end of the egg and one or two that have it at the large and small ends of the eggs. The Orpington eggs have the largest air cells of the whole set of eggs, so I think my real challenge will be figuring out a way to keep these well hydrated while not over saturating the eggs from the other breeds.
Good luck with your first hatch and please stop by to post updates for us on how everything goes for you!
The easiest way to check and see if one breed of chicken egg is more porous then another is to watch the air cells in two or more breeds at a time. If the air cells are growing at a similar rate then you should be fine. But don't get too worried if you see some slight differences between the eggs. They won't look perfectly even. I've been hatching multiple batches every spring and summer for four years and I've never seen that much of a difference between the Call duck eggs, Faverelles, Silkies, BCMarans, Buff Orpingtons, Cochins and eggs from the Hybrids we rescued. Try keeping humidity around 40% and then shift it to 60 or 65% during the last 3 day lock down. I used to lose some after they pipped. But that's when I had humidity at 65% the last week of incubation. Found out moisture builds up inside the air cell and when the chick pipped through the membrane (& sometimes the shell too) she actually drowned from the moisture built up inside the shell. So I tried keeping the humidity down for 18 days on my last hatch. On March 27th I had 23 out of 24 eggs hatch out and fluffed up pretty quickly. Only one egg infertile. Now the 2nd batch of 16 are due next Tues. All were fertile and all growing fine. I now have 3 different types of incubators so I'm experimenting!!!
