Hello my name is Sam and I am brand new to the chicken world. I have a quad of pure Old English Wheatons and A trio of pure Light Brown dutch Bantams. I am averaging about ten eggs per week. I have the following questions. 1. Does the styrofoam incubators really work for hatching bantam eggs if you are turning them manually? 2. Can I number the eggs with with a lead pencils and add about 10 per week knowing that I will be getting weekly hatchings? Here is my plan tell me if it should fly please anyone. I intend to build a brooder with two or three compartments to start with so, I am ready if it does work. Im gonna gather eggs daily, put them in an egg carton and tilt them from one side to the other three or four time a day. Every 7 days I will mark however many eggs (averaging 10 now) using a lead pencil with a number 21 day later than the day I put them in the incubator. After 21 days I should be taking chicks out on a weekly basis. Should it work?
i'm fairly new to hatching too but i know that at day 18 you need to stop turning and up the humidity so you would need a separate incubator for a hatcher. you could move the ones ready to hatch into that one weekly. if it was me i wouldn't do a staggered hatch with out a hatcher. i am actually doing that now. i have eggs that i set about 4 days apart and i will move the early ones around day 15 or so. i also have a styrofoam incubator but my husband added a fan and it works so much better with it. good luck with your hatching
Welcome to BackYard Chickens Sam! Styrofoam incubators will hatch any kind of chicken egg, and alot of other eggs aswell. I'm guessing by 'styrofoam' you mean the 'little giant' or 'hovabator'? Or a home-made incubator? Either way, they can all hatch chicken eggs. Bantam or not. You should probably Re-think adding 10 eggs a week. The incubators have to be cleaned somtime, or it can cause bacterial problems with the eggs and chicks. If your putting in eggs with different hatch dates, keep it where there is only two different hatch dates, as having chicks hatch all over the place is very frusterating. Especially since eggs that are in lockdown need a higher humidity % than the eggs you just put in. If you'd like to do it this way, please buy a couple more incubators A lead pencil is fine with marking the eggs. Good Luck!
