now what ?

[PDH]

our first 4 out of 16 hatched yesterday . So when do i remove the new chicks and how long should i sit on the unhatched eggs ? thank you all for your help .

 

[Ridgerunner]

Hi, welcome to the forum, glad you joined.

You have a lot of different options and you can get a lot of different opinions. Before a chick hatches, it absorbs the remaining yolk. That allows the chick to not eat or drink for at least 72 hours, often longer. That's why they can be mailed. There is no need to remove the chick any earlier than 72 hours. Many people do though.

Some people open the incubator during hatch, others consider this a huge no-no. Their concern is shrink-wrapping a chick. If the membrane around the chick dries out before it hatches it can hold the chick so tightly that it cannot move to hatch. That's why we normally increase the humidity at the end, to help prevent that membrane from drying out when the chick pips. The concern is that opening the incubator can allow the incubator to dry out enough to shrink-wrap a chick. It can happen, I did it once, but it is pretty rare. There are a lot of factors involved. How dry was it during incubation, how long is the incubator open, how fast does it recover humidity when you close it, how moist is the outside air, is there a breeze blowing that moves the air. There are tricks people use to make it safer to open the incubator. I personally do not open the incubator during hatch unless I have an emergency in there that I have to deal with. But if I have an emergency I open it and take care of the problem.

I assume all the eggs were put in the incubator at the same time. That way they should all hatch about the same time. For a lot of different reasons eggs can hatch a couple of days apart even if they were started at the same time. Whether under a broody hen or in the incubator, some of my hatches are over in less than 24 hours after the first one hatches. I've had some drag on for over 48 hours. One hatch I specifically remember a chick hatched one evening before I went to bed. It took 24 hours before I even saw another pip, I was getting worried. So I went to bed with just that one additional pip. When I woke the next morning the remaining 16 had hatched. The hatch was over.

Others do it differently but in your situation I'd wait at least 48 hours after the first one hatched to remove any. Base that decision on what else is going on in there. I'd probably give the remaining eggs a full 72 hours after the first before I tossed them.

When the first chicks hatch they can make a mess in there. They slime things with hatching fluid and they start pooping. After a certain amount of time, usually about three days, it can start to stink. Really stink. I open the unhatched eggs to see development and try to determine when the ones that stated developing actually died to see if I can see a pattern and maybe tweak my incubation. I've never had a live chick after 72 hours though I suspect some people have, even if they started the eggs at the same time.

Good luck and congratulations on those 4 chicks. Hopefully you will soon have more.