Wow Ill never let this happen again. Had two Royal Palm hens that decided to set on the same nest. They had 32 eggs in the nest so I decided to let them set. When they started to hatch on May 21st thing started getting interesting. I noticed that they had way more than the 32 eggs in the nest 12 hatched out in the first four days and four of them got squished by the hens. So I pulled the 8 poults out of the nest to the brooder box. Realizing that some of my other hens were laying in the same nest since there were now 42 eggs still in the nest after 12 had hatched I figured I had to do something. So I pulled the 42 eggs and put them in an incubator after candling them. There were eggs in all stages of development. I put them in a 30 count egg flat and laid the rest around the edges. In the next 22 days I managed to get 37 of the 42 remaining eggs to hatch 1, 2, and 3 a day every couple of days. For a total of 45 poults from a total of 54 eggs. I keep the humidity at 60 and never turned an egg other than candling them about every 3 days and removing the ones that hatched and moving eggs from the incubator floor to the egg flat. I would arrange the eggs so the ones I expected to hatch next were on the outer edge of the egg flat when I candled them each time. Like I said Ill never let this happen again as it was a real pain to try and save all the eggs. When it was all finished the 8 that hatched first under the hens were 31 days old!
31 Days
54 eggs
42 Hatched
I'd say it was a Success but not real smart on my part!
31 Days
54 eggs
42 Hatched
I'd say it was a Success but not real smart on my part!
