Newbie to incubating- slightly nervous!!!

[katiec11]

i am about to buy some fertile eggs, i have borrowed an incubator off a friend... i have a few questions and hoping to get some advise...

-what do i need to know about where i'm getting my eggs from?
-do diseases get past on to the egg- should i be worried about the health of my existing flock?
-at what stage will i know the eggs aren't going to hatch?
-whet should i expect to see my new babies?
-what do you recommend for incubator settings?
-how do i vaccinate day old chicks?

thanks in advance for your help

 

[Ridgerunner]

-what do i need to know about where i'm getting my eggs from?

I don’t know what Australia has but here in the States we have the NPIP program. Each state is different but the flocks are tested against certain diseases that can be passed on through the eggs. Pullorum is the major disease and that has just about been eliminated in the States because of NPIP. So here we get NPIP certified eggs. I don’t know who your local animal health control officer is but you can talk to them about this.

You probably have a lot of options on where you can get eggs. If you can manage to see the flock, see that they are looking active and healthy and are of the quality you want, so much the better. If you can’t then your choice is based on reputation, if the person has any history you can find, or just trust the person.

-do diseases get past on to the egg- should i be worried about the health of my existing flock?

Very few diseases get passed on through the egg, but there are a few. Hatching eggs as opposed to bringing in live chickens, especially chickens not from an established hatchery, is about the safest way there is to bring in new stock or get new breeds. Everything you do with living animals has a risk but getting hatching eggs is about the safest way to go, especially if Australia has something like NPIP and you get eggs from that source.

-at what stage will i know the eggs aren't going to hatch?
-whet should i expect to see my new babies?

You can candle eggs to see if they are developing but I would not rely on that for my first incubation. Get some experience before you start discarding eggs from candling. Darker or colored eggs can be pretty hard to see inside. Go ahead and candle the eggs, it’s a great learning experience and pretty exciting. That’s how you get experience.

Ideally chicken eggs hatch after 21 days of development, but I don’t live in the “ideal” world, I live in the world “I deal” with. For many different reasons eggs can and often do hatch two or more days early or late, occasionally even more but that’s getting extreme. Sometimes my hatches are over within 24 hours of the first one hatching, some hatches drag on for over two days. Each hatch is different.

I don’t know an easy way to tell you when the hatch is over. Just be patient before you do anything drastic.


-what do you recommend for incubator settings?

It depends on the incubator. In a forced air, the recommended setting is 99.5 F (37.5 C). The temperature in a forced air should be the same anywhere inside.

Hot air rises. In a still (or thermal) air incubator, one without a fan, it is very important where you take the temperature. The normal recommendation is 101.5 F (38.6 C) at the top of the eggs. If you have a still air, try raising and lowering the thermometer to see for yourself how sensitive it is to position. That’s another way to get experience.

You will get all kinds of different recommendations on humidity settings. That’s because different settings work for different people. You’d think the conditions inside the incubator would be the same for all of us regardless of the incubator or where it is located but that is not true. The professionals that hatch 1,000,000 each week know that if they move an incubator from one side of the incubation room to the other it may require a change in humidity settings for optimum hatch. They fine tune that by trial and error after analyzing the eggs that don’t hatch. Each egg is different too. One humidity might work well for one egg but not be really good for another. The good news is that there are a wide range of humidity settings that work for most eggs so you don’t necessarily have to be real precise with humidity, but it is an important factor.

I suggest you read the instructions that should have come with the incubator and follow those as best you can. Then after the hatch evaluate the unhatched eggs to see if you think you need to tweak the humidity settings. That means keep records of the humidity and try to be as consistent as you can. That’s not always easy. During the first 18 days of incubation it’s average humidity that counts, not just one isolated spike or valley.

Another important thing is that you need to calibrate your instruments, especially the thermometer. Since the hygrometer is more of a range it doesn’t have to be really precise but I still like to know what I’m working with. Never trust any instrument unless it is calibrated, including the instruments that come with the incubator. These might help.

Calibrate a Thermometer
http://www.allfoodbusiness.com/calibrating_thermometers.php

Rebel’s Thermometer Calibration
http://cmfarm.us/ThermometerCalibration.html

Rebel’s Hygrometer Calibration
http://cmfarm.us/HygrometerCalibration.html


-how do i vaccinate day old chicks?

I don’t. I’ll leave that to someone else to answer.

 

[katiec11]

Thank you so much @ridgerunner that is awesome!!! Definitely a lot of help