November Hatch-A-Long (2014)

[darajosami]

You should probably first force them to stay in the square box by placing eggs in there and enclosing the whole thing with chicken wire or something similar so they can't come out for 2-3 days. Needless to say you will need to make arrangements for their food and water. You can worry about the chicks around day 18. At that point you can move them to safer place.

so when would you say would be the best time to do this? At night? Will try to find some chicken wire not sure if I have any but I think I do have another type of wire.

 

[Dcat]

Temp spikes all over at my house today

UGH! First an expected rise after adding warm water to the bottom, it just lasted a bit longer than I wanted. I moved over some towel to vent some heat and when I came back it was low. @#$$% So I covered it back up only to come back an hour later with a CAT on top of it and temps way way up again! grrr cats! vented too much again. Finally got it stable this past couple hours. Oh well.

The eggs are looking a little iffy today after all of that. I'm almost positive that I have at least one loss from each batch. Maybe more. But some of the little critters are still looking great and moving around a lot. I'll have to keep a close eye for a couple of days as I have no idea how many viable eggs I've got at the moment. It's somewhere between 0 and 18.

• darajosami: Your little broodies are beautiful! I've always heard it's best to deal with broodies and their eggs at night time. Maybe they'll take to the new nest if you move them after dark. Lucky you, I wanted a broody so bad this year!

Grats to everyone who got eggs today, and good luck!

I'm keeping my incubator in the laundry room so I can keep a shut door between my cats and the machine, LOL. They are way too interested in it and I don't want any overheating due to cat naps or having it knocked over. Before I got my thermostat hooked up I actually had a temp spike of 106 and freaked out but crossed my fingers. I didn't loose any of the fertile ones and thanked my lucky stars.
I will say(again?) that I'm jealous of all the eggs everyone is incubating but this is a test hatch for my new bator. So far it is much much better and roomier for more eggs than the last one I built.

 

[Junibutt]

so when would you say would be the best time to do this? At night? Will try to find some chicken wire not sure if I have any but I think I do have another type of wire.

Its probably better at night because they don't run around much that time and all they will worry about is to take care of the eggs.

 

[Junibutt]

Two of my young girls Sheila (the Legbar) and Chalie (the EE) who are 18 weeks old, started sleeping in my garage coop once I moved my broody KoKo there. I found them actually sleeping right above (almost touching diistance) from where Koko is brooding.

I had been wondering whats their interest in the broody that they left the rest of the flock and sleeping with her. And today I realized "Duh" they are KoKo's chicks. Even though mama rejected them more than 3 months ago, they still have a bond with her and like to sleep close to her.

I will wait to see how this Mother-Daughters-Young chicks drama plays out. Will KoKo let them close to the chicks? I have a feeling KoKo will abandon the chicks pretty soon and then they will be taken care of their elder sisters. Lets see!


Also, today is day 13, so I will candle eggs tonight. Have 6 of the 11 left. 3 CL X Red Star, 2 CL x RIR and 1 CL X CL (was only 1.6 oz so don't have high expectations)

 

[rachelpotter]

I'm glad we have all of the variety in here! Broodies, Homemade Bators, Newbies who are clueless and spent WAY to much on shipped eggs! (haha last one is ME!)


Well my eggies have sat 24 hours and I will be setting them around noon. I am incubating at my clinic, since the we have back up generators and I have a bathroom in my office with no drafts. I have to admit I hated leaving the eggs last night... I'm so strange!


I have a Brinsea Octagon 20 and then a borrowed Still Air Styrofoam model for the overflow of extras the shippers sent. Hopefully things will go decently. If I can just get 1 or 2 to hatch out of each breed I'd be happy.

 

[DuckLover1029]

my duck eggs got here last night there were 13 in tack eggs that sat overnight, put them in this mourning, now for the waiting 26 days is far to long!!!!

will have to wait and see.

 

[Sustained]

I'm glad we have all of the variety in here! Broodies, Homemade Bators, Newbies who are clueless and spent WAY to much on shipped eggs! (haha last one is ME!)

Me too! The $ was worth the enjoyment though


15 quail set 10/19, hatch date 11/4
20 chicken eggs set 10/21, hatch date 11/11
6 silkie eggs set 10/23, hatch date 11/13
12 RIR eggs set 10/23, hatch date 11/13 (local eggs)
8 silkie eggs set 10/25, hatch date 11/14

My duck eggs will be here today but I will update that info tomorrow when I set them. The silkie eggs I set today looked like someone had drop kicked and sat on the box! Luckily the seller had done a beautiful job of packaging them inside so none broke but I guess I will have to wait and see if any will hatch after what looks like an extremely rough trip.

 

[ochochicas]

Don't feel too bad Dcat...by the time I toss out all my duds tonight I might only have 5 eggs left LOL I briefly candled a handful of eggs last night. The ones I thought were fertile are not doing a thing, and the ones I thought would do nothing have baby chicks growing in them.

We are preparing for a major wind storm today and tomorrow. I'm sure the power is going to go out. I'm already planning a way to keep the incubator warm by filling it with jars of hot water that we heat up on the wood stove. LOL It would be yet another experiment, but I think it could work. DH got the generator ready. I think he's more worried about the eggs than anyone. The generator uses so much fuel that I told him these are going to be the most expensive mutt chick eggs ever hatched.

If we have power tonight I'll post an update on the candling.

 

[Antiquity]

I am quite pleased by the variety we have here as well. It's very comforting to be going at this with others.

The past 12 hours at my house have been nerve wracking. After all those temp spikes and dips yesterday, all last night temps were low and I stayed up late trying to level them out a bit. Not too low but 97-98. I finally go to bed only to have my husband wake me up at 6 am saying the temp was 109!!

THIS IS WHY I GOT RID OF THAT BLASTED STYROFOAM INCUBATOR!

I candled a couple on the spot and they were moving so I stabilised the temps and went back to bed. Finally get a chance to take a good look at them this afternoon and they mostly seem OK. I'm almost positive I lost one from the first batch, maybe two, but the second batch is looking fine. WHEW! Makes me feel much better. Last night they were not very active and I thought I might be down to nine eggs. If I lose that many eggs I might go on an egg binge that I can't afford.

So glad that I'm about halfway there. Total egg count Batch #1: day 10, 5-6/9 Batch #2: day 8, 11/12


I hope everyone else has more comforting news today. Maybe all of your successes will help me stay calm.

 

[ochochicas]

Honestly I don't think the fan in my incubator works as well as it could. After moving the temperature probe around to different part of the incubator, I discovered one side was 102 degrees and the other side is only 97 - 98. Now I have it set differently, so I experimented some more. The tops of the eggs now are 100 degrees almost all the time, but the bottoms are 96 - 97. Lots of turning and changing locations hoping everything will be fine.

The good news is that after one side of the incubator being at least 102-103 if not higher for the first day, my eggs seem to be OK afterall. All my legbar eggs were on that side and I was sure they had been cooked. I candled a couple of them last night and they are fine! Now I'm just hoping the power doesn't go out tonight.