Setting (Again) April 16th-18th...

[fishinchicken]

2 of the 3 Indian Runner eggs I set are pipped and rockin like wild! Hopefully the kids and I will get to see a full hatch today before school lets out!!!

 

[Cynthia12]

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my two favs...the first and the last..lol...sooo cute!
You are going to have so many different colors happening,,this should be a blast to watch as they grow.

 

[Cynthia12]

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I let them wriggle around a bit, then when they start to settle, the flash does the rest..they freeze! lol..funny to see their natural instincts kick in.

 

[bburn]

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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!!

 

[meepitqueenie]

as of this am 4 of 14 have hatched and i had to go to work....

hope i come home to more

 

[Muzzie]

Congratulations to all of you who have hatched some chicks.

I went into lockdown this morning with 6 all wiggling, these last three days of waiting will be worst for me.

 

[TBJumper0514]

Well, I am done with this hatch. I have 5 BLRW chicks. I will try and get some pics tonight. I eggtopsied the others that made it to lockdown and had 7 dead in shell. Most had yolks that were not fully absorbed. I was having some humidity issues, so that must have caused the hatching issues. Sucks because I started off with 39 BLRW and 12 BBS Ameraucana eggs. None of the Ameraucana ever developed. I am glad most of you are having great hatches though, these shipped eggs really cause a lot of heartbreak!

On a better note, I got my Hovabator Genesis 1588 today and have it set up. 35 Lavender Orpington eggs will be going in tonight! I bought 2 dozen from a local breeder and she gave me 11 extra. So I am excited about hatching eggs that have not been through the Postal Service's rough handling. Hopefully this hatch will be much better! I am still going to be looking for quality BLRW hatching eggs as that is a breed I really want to build up a nice flock of for the future. Might just have to buy some chicks and raise my own!

 

[woodprairie]

Here is my report:
I incubated 41 eggs.
26 were mailorder.
Of those mailorder ones 11 were infertile or never started to develop (I opened them at day 24)
6 were fully formed but never pipped.
9 hatched. Of these, one died after hatching, and 4 are not walking correctly. one of those may never, the other 3 may stretch out.
pretty low success rate. But I did get some and I'll multiply them up, and we had fun.


Of my 15 eggs from my hens, (that never had to travel in a box)
2 were infertile.
2 died after hatch (one that had only zipped)
1 did not pip but was fully formed
66% success


The eggs that I got mailorder were beautifully packaged and shipped promptly. I put them in the incubator as soon as they arrived.
Early in incubation I had to move the incubator because it got cold outside and our house got cold and the incubator needed a warmer room. this led to some fiddling with the thermostat, which may not have been good for my hatch rate. Another thing that happened, which I don't think hurt hatch was I had to go away on day 21.5 for 56 hours. So I interupted lockdown with a damp towel over the opening and took out the 5 that had hatched so far and put them in a dog crate inside under a broody hen. 36 hours later I had the girl doing chores water the rest of the ones that had hatched. later that night we arrived home and I was very happy to see so many more had hatched, though quite late.

If I get eggs mailorder again, I'll wait for a broody hen and then swap out her eggs.

 

[chena16c]

Seems as though I ended up with my 4 BLRW....I still have the 2 Spitzhauben eggs...candled them and don't see any movement but since today is officially day 21 I will wait a few more just in case. The did get moved around the incubator a lot with the 5 chicks so I'm doubtful, but we will see. Pictures will come soon.

 

[meepitqueenie]

well i have 8 chicks out of 14 that went into lock down... going to leave the other eggs in there one more day but not seeing any signs of pips,etc.

heres my brood

looking forward to getting my brinsea this week and starting another batch.

oh and here is my cat....