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Pretty good hatch rate, I must say! I think I'm done at 13 of 16, which I am real proud of.
And now....this morning there are two eggs left in the incubator!
38 of 40 hatched.
I am leaving the two eggs in until the end of the day, will candle and if no movement I will shut down. No pips on either one. And one.....I could see no movement. The other I could see some movement last night. I don't think they will hatch....but I have to hang on a little because 21 days was last night at 10pm.
What it ride this hatch was.....one pip on Saturday morning around 11 pm. Had to go to town and three hours later still nothing. Finally around 9pm there were pips everywhere....14 eggs pipped at one time. Sunday they hatched all day. I would go in and there would be three chicks out.
I did have a problem with two eggs. The humidity dropped all the sudden. Now, I do open and get chicks out when there are three or four chicks out. The incubator is just too crowded with chicks running around and eggs trying to zip. I do think however, that once it is not so crowded, that the chicks in there cheeping and running around helps the chicks WANT to get out. But I only open the window and only when the humidity really is spiked from the moisture on the chicks.
AND I bought a reptile tank hygrometer this time. The expensive one I had bought simply does not work. This little $10 one seemed to work really well. Basically I kept the humidity around 70. It's going to spike if you have a couple of chicks hatch. Plus, my temps stayed pretty steady. Towards the end it was hard to keep my stale air(oops, that is supposed to be still air but it sure is stale now!) at 100 degrees.
Now, if I will just clean up the incubator and NOT hatch any more eggs! AND if DH would get home and get me another coop and run built! It is a really good thing that my brooder in the garage is the liner to a truck bed and only has 15 3 1/2 week old chicks in it! Am going to come up with a divider for it so both ages can be in together. The bigger guys will go out to the tractor in 2 1/2 weeks. By then DH should be home and making headway on the new coop and run.
Thanks everyone for sharing your hatches with me as well as your knowledge and experiences. Hatching eggs is so exciting and rewarding. And thanks too for putting up with my wordy posts!
On a kind of sad note I do have on chick I am not sure about. Today will tell.....it was on of the simi-shrinkwrapped eggs. The one that was worse actually looks better today. This is a cochin baby and all the cochin eggs hatched later. It seems really small and not a lot of strength. I am going to take it out later today and try to get some vitamin water in it and see if that helps. My cochins are why I hatch eggs. I love me some LF Cochins!!