Yeah! Hoping mine all hatch, they're looking good i think. Lockdown is in on Sunday, fingers crossed, and for you too!yeah after my first failed hatch i thought it was my styro incubator that was bad but it turns out it was the eggs. the new duck eggs I've got now are doing fine and look like they all well be making lock-down fists up for homemade bators
Yeah! Hoping mine all hatch, they're looking good i think. Lockdown is in on Sunday, fingers crossed, and for you too!
well here is a pic with the new air cell lines for day 22 i tried to take pic of the shadows of the ducklings inside the egg's but my camera would only pick up the light in the air cellbut everything looks in order lock down is on the 3rd I'm so excited
yeah the red one's are best it doesn't blind the chicks and will keep them from killing a other chick if blood is drawn so they can't see the blood. here is alink to help if you have any questions i will do my best to answer them. https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/raising-your-baby-chicksMe too! Mine will be in lock down from tomorrow lunchtime! I am literally
Today I'm going to go to the center and get some supplies, still need to make a brooder!! And i need to get chick feed and water bottles.
I took a bunch of cardboard boxes from outside our local shop (they were throwing them away) and i'm going to cut them and stick them together to make a bigger box that i can just chuck out when it gets messy. I can get an unlimited supply of boxes so i can just replace them as needed. We need to get a heat lamp too! But my hubby said we've got one somewhere in the house, need to find it! What type of bulb is best - a red one? I have no clue....
don't open the incubator till something hatches it's ok to see them wobble the temp should be ok only start to worry when they are 24 hours past the 21 day markThanks for the link!
This is now day 19. My eggs have been in lockdown since lunch time yesterday on day 18. I candled them first and they all looked good, saw some movement in all but two of them, and when i laid them in the incubator for lockdown i saw the them wobbling, including the two that i didn't see moving when i candled them before - so they were all ok. Should i candle again to look for internal pips or just leave them? When i candled them yesterday i saw what looked like a beak, but i wasn't sure, do you think that one has internally piped?
I also added two more shallow dishes of water and lowered the temp to 36.5 - 37C. Or at least i'm trying to keep it at that, it was too low last night, around 36C, and i had to re-ajust the light closer to them at 4am this morning and now it's up at 36.5C.
Also, i noticed if i tap on the glass they wobble. Is it ok to do that? I'v not seen them wobble yet this morning, I'm worried now because the temp was too low last night.....
Oh, and when i candled them yesterday i marked the shell at the lowest point in the air cell and laid them that way facing up back in the incubator. Am i doing it right? Is there anything i'v missed?
(and i just tapped the glass again and saw two of them wobble!)
well here is my set upAh, this is nerve racking! The temp is dropping by 1 degree at night. I'm covering the incubator with towels and trying to keep the temp steady, but i don't want to fall sleep and have it over heat and kill them. It's about 36.6C during the day and 35.6C by the morning. Also, because the eggs are wobbling the thermometer sensor keeps falling off of the surface of the eggs and i think that's effecting the readings! I opened the door. I know I'm not supposed to but i had to adjust the light a bit closer to the eggs because i couldn't get the temp to go up! I've seen them all wobbling though. Egg number two has been wobbling the most last night and this morning - do you think that one will hatch first? Maybe that was the one i thought i could see a beak in the air cell on day 18, but i forget which number it was.
I was also reading more and i read for still air incubators the pans of water should cover at least half of the floor space! I didn't know that before and i had just one tea cup saucer sized dish of water in there, now I've added 3 more because I'm worried there's not enough humidity, and the thing i was reading said you can't have too much humidity at hatch time - it's usually too low humidity that causes problems. None of the eggs have piped yet, otherwise i wouldn't have opened the door to adjust things. I hope they'll be OK.
Also i was reading about ventilation, i think I'm good on ventilation but it says you need air flow under the eggs. Mine are in a shoe box just sitting on the bottom of the cupboard, it is supposed to be elevated off of the floor?
Thanks for all your help, BTW, i need it!
this set up is with a air stone so air is always under the egg's even though the incubator is closed and this holds the temp a bit better then my old set up. the air stone is in a small tupperware box which the eggs are on top on hard wire cloth
heres a better pic of the set up before i put the tub of water in there
