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We had a discussion after the sale at Blanchard last night about hatch rates this time of year. The consensus among those with much more experience than myself was that when the temperature goes over 90 degrees, the hatch rate goes down. I was glad to realize that my low hatch rate recently may not all be due to "operator error"
For the big birds I find that fertility drops off drastically above 90 and almost 0 after 95 I very seldom set eggs from our LF after temps stay above 95 for two weeks, it just doesn't make much sense. It will pic back up this fall when temps drop and you will have about two months of good hatches with decent temps, the birds raised through the winter also tend to lay better the following winter it has to do with teh amount of daylight available to them while growing. So there is good reason for fall hatches not only will this give you spring point of lay pullets but they will lay better as well. Just an observation from experience after reading considerably on the subject a University in Australia ran a similar study for 5 years and found the results to be consistant so I tried it and it works.
We had a discussion after the sale at Blanchard last night about hatch rates this time of year. The consensus among those with much more experience than myself was that when the temperature goes over 90 degrees, the hatch rate goes down. I was glad to realize that my low hatch rate recently may not all be due to "operator error"
For the big birds I find that fertility drops off drastically above 90 and almost 0 after 95 I very seldom set eggs from our LF after temps stay above 95 for two weeks, it just doesn't make much sense. It will pic back up this fall when temps drop and you will have about two months of good hatches with decent temps, the birds raised through the winter also tend to lay better the following winter it has to do with teh amount of daylight available to them while growing. So there is good reason for fall hatches not only will this give you spring point of lay pullets but they will lay better as well. Just an observation from experience after reading considerably on the subject a University in Australia ran a similar study for 5 years and found the results to be consistant so I tried it and it works.