Setting Eggs on the 30th in Springfield, IL

[rsf31tmp]

great question....I have 5 or 6 more holes in my turner, but since I have to remove mine on day 18, I didn't want to deal with that with the later ariving eggs.

 

[EweSheep]

I'm so sorry about your father. He was too young to go, same age as my grandmother, also died of a heart attack.

You can candle at ten days or twelve days old before you can chuck them out. That is what I do when I have a staggered hatches and it worked quite well for me.

 

[rsf31tmp]

thanks for the kind words and the words of wisdom!

Will keep that in mind!

 

[sheila3935]

You can candle them at anytime but probably not see any veining til about day 6 or 7 I have a staggered hatch right now. I have 11 eggs due to hatch Feb 10th and set 21 more eggs Feb 1st. I have 2 incubators one for incubating one for hatching. Im very sorry about your father. Thats really awful. Sending you prayers of comfort

 

[ggarratt]

I was just candling and I have developing chicks! Yay! I tried candling two days ago on day 5 and wasn't seeing anything and was sure they had all frozen and were duds. Then, after reading more online, I just tried again tonight with a brighter LED headlamp, and lo and behold... there were things growing in those eggs!!

It's so strange that it's actually working and in another two weeks I'll have baby chicks. I just cannot believe it! I didn't candle them all, because I didn't want to have the incubator open for too long, but I looked at 5 out of the 24 and saw development in all of them. I can't wait for them to hatch so I can see who comes out! I think I'm going to take the week of hatching off from work (I needed to use up vacation anyway) so that I won't miss a moment of it. Anyway, if you can't tell from the rest of the post, I'm super excited. I think especially so because I thought the whole bator full were duds.

rsf31tmp have you candled yet? How is it going?

 

[rsf31tmp]

Good for you and I am excited as well! I candled on day 9 or 10 and looked at about 7 or 8 of the eggs randomly. I found something growing in every egg...hoping to hatch about 30 of my 35 eggs. I did break one about day 5 or 6 and it was very develolped for that stage. Was not happy with myself, but I was happy with what I saw in there. One week from tonight I take them all out of the turner!

 

[rsf31tmp]

it is Saturday, by Sunday nite my eggs will be done with day 14, Thursday nite I will be removing the turner...I am so pumped!

 

[ggarratt]

I can't believe how quickly this is going! I'm a little behind you. I'm only on day 10 today... but I guess it's almost the half-way point. Are you going to candle them all on day 18 and try to take out the quitters? Or are you just going to leave them all in and see what hatches?? I think I will be pretty nervous to take anything out unless I find that it's incredibly obvious that some of them have absolutely nothing happening in them.
Next Sunday we're getting piglets, and then on Wednesday or Thursday we should hopefully have 20 or so chicks (depending on how this whole hatching business goes). Spring is in the air here, even if the weather doesn't agree. We're supposed to get more snow tomorrow. But hopefully nothing to worry about power-wise.
Are you just going to have them on their sides when you take them out of the turner? I was reading a thread recently where somebody was putting each egg in a little ring from a toilet paper roll. It seemed like it might be a good idea to keep them from getting kicked and rolled about once some start hatching. Does anybody have experience with that? I've obviously heard about hatching them in the egg carton as well, but I've read that standing in the curved bottom of the egg carton can be bad for their little feet. I would love to hear some thoughts.

 

[rsf31tmp]

wow, hatching eggs and piglets....that is awesome....no calves?

 

[ggarratt]

Haha, no calves yet. We hope to have Highland Cattle sometime in the future, but we're easing our way there since both of us have full time jobs. It's a lot to take on! We ended up not picking up the piglets this weekend. We'll get them next weekend instead, which will be much easier for us.

How are things going with your eggs? I think I might have spotted a bacterial ring in one of mine. So I'm here on BYC right now researching exactly what it looks like and what I should do about it. I don't think I should keep an egg with bacteria in the incubator... but like I said before, I'm so hesitant to take any out!