She said/He said Who's right? Who's wrong? No one!

[lazy gardener]

Good idea on the clorox wipe. I'm sure you've all heard my 6th grade story when I was removing a couple of non-hatched goose eggs out of the classroom incubator, and one exploded in my hand. We had to evacuate the entire wing of the building for the rest of the day!

 

[WVduckchick]

Oh yuck.

The day I went out to pick up my Leahy, I passed an old farmhouse with a Fresh Brown Eggs sign out front. I stopped to chat, and ended up bringing home a couple dozen ISA Brown eggs and a dozen and a half assorted bantam eggs to toss in my incubator. She is selling eggs out of her house, and had a bunch ready to go.

Of course I have 175 or so ISA Browns of my own...but I like to shop the competition.

I set those eggs at midnight last night, and by midmorning there was a vaguely unpleasant odor in the incubator when I went to turn the monster turkey egg. It was stronger a little later. I found a couple of eggs with smears of broken egg on them, and cleaned it off as gently as I could, but the odor was still there.

By tonight it was getting pretty sulphurous in my office. So I picked up each one of those eggs and did a sniff test. When I found the stinker I almost left the eggs needing a bath. I have a pretty strong stomach and can suppress my gag reflex quite well, but this was almost too much.

I tossed that egg out the doorwall into the garden, and it popped. I have never heard an egg "pop" before. Eeew. I don't want to see what kind of mess it made in my potato patch.

The other half of the story...a few hours before finding the stinker, I went to make dinner and figured I'd use a few of these bought eggs. Flat, runny, yolks falling apart...no freshness there.

Yuck.

When checking for stinkers, have a Clorox wipe in your hand (or dryer sheet, etc). It works like an air freshener to let you smell each egg individually, and tune out the background stench.

Oh good grief. Sounds like a bunch of old eggs. This could be a really interesting incubation.

ok guys what kind of chicken laid this egg

I was gonna say a hen that had gotten lucky!

part of the fun of growing up with my mother was getting to throw away the stinkers after the hatch. there always seems to be one or two when the hen leaves the nest. Momma had true free range chickens. We had to find the nest most of the time because they would never set in the hen house or even lay there. we new which ones were ripe and ready to through hold your nose here she go's .

Ewwww

 

[scflock]

This thread gives me an idea. You know the TV show "Barmageddon" where bar owners swap bars and try to do better than the owner? Think how cool that would be with incubators. SC, you get to use Amy's LG, and Amy, you get to use SC's Brinsea.

Who's more successful now?

Um, no. Unless LG wants to pay for the years of therapy after the pain and suffering of dealing with that death trap

This is the best thread ever!! I've been incubating eggs for a few years with various success. Lots of reading Backyard Chicken posts on every possible idea.
Right now I have four incubators running... Not Briseas... One really old foam bought at a poultry auction by a friend and given to me. Two forced air Tractor supply and one still air...
I have six bantam silkies mixes from a friend, four pipping now on the 19th day......
and the others hopefully hatching a few days apart for the next week.
One group of eggs are Welsummers and pure Silkies that I got through the mail from someone on Backyard Chickens.
Another group is from Val on Backyard Chickens and are Buff Orpingtons, Cochins and Dominiques.
Trying to be patient with the current group as four have pipped today. One early this morning and whose little beak is really working hard..
I'm loving this thread as I want to be like Scflock but have a natural inclination towards AmyLynn's mothering traits...

I love my chickens and spend a lot of time photographing their eggs...

Welcome to BYC, and this is a fun thread. Since you are new here I won't tell you the caption I have in my head for that pic

I will say, though, that the frog has a French accent

As for the pippers, have you ever played chick music for them? I use this video:

and it really keeps them motivated. When they have pipped, I just play it periodically through the day. When they are zipping, I play it on a loop when they start, and they are usually out in 15 minutes, give or take...lol

Welcome to the thread, btw.

You know what else works? Live dadgum chicks!

ok guys what kind of chicken laid this egg

BYC910, I like you, you're my kind of guy, but you are going to have to give just a wee bit more information...

A hen!! lol

Where do you live? In SC? I want a couple more hens for my layer pen. How much are your BCM?

Upstate SC, about 4.5 hrs from you. I'm not selling my BCM yet. My first group should start laying soon, and my winter project is to get a bunch of chicks and grow them out so I can cull to my main breeder flock. My rooster is great, but a few hens have issues. I will be breeding more for egg color than SOP, but there are a few flaws that need to come out. There's a guy in Athens that sells decent Wade Jeane birds, and one in Augusta that sells Davis line. Both guys have birds that have their own faults, but the Augusta eggs are gorgeous. I can PM you some contact numbers if you want them

Then I would have guessed a chicken egg...lol

 

[scflock]

Update on the hands-off hatch:
The hatch is over. 22/26 and it's day 23. #22 hatched around 6PM last night, 45 hours after the first hatch. He spent the night in the incubator, and still looked wet and sticky this morning. This tells me that the conditions in the eggs were already starting to deteriorate when he kicked out. No pips on the 4 remaining eggs this morning, so time to shut down. Anything that hatches from this point forward is likely to have issues. The other 4 eggs are tossed, no eggtopsies. They didn't hatch, and they weren't meant to hatch. I have gotten over wanting to see what happened. I know they were developed going into lockdown, and they didn't hatch, that's all I need to know. I got 22 beautiful, healthy chicks, and I'm happy with that

 

[AmyLynn2374]

Good idea on the clorox wipe. I'm sure you've all heard my 6th grade story when I was removing a couple of non-hatched goose eggs out of the classroom incubator, and one exploded in my hand. We had to evacuate the entire wing of the building for the rest of the day!

Ewww...lol

Um, no. Unless LG wants to pay for the years of therapy after the pain and suffering of dealing with that death trap
LMAO. I thought you were intherapy from the first attempt w/the LG??
Welcome to BYC, and this is a fun thread. Since you are new here I won't tell you the caption I have in my head for that pic

I will say, though, that the frog has a French accent
You're awful! Now I can't unsee what you have made me see!!
You know what else works? Live dadgum chicks!

Video works even better, plus you don't have chicks peeping loudly before the first hatcher.
BYC910, I like you, you're my kind of guy, but you are going to have to give just a wee bit more information...

Upstate SC, about 4.5 hrs from you. I'm not selling my BCM yet. My first group should start laying soon, and my winter project is to get a bunch of chicks and grow them out so I can cull to my main breeder flock. My rooster is great, but a few hens have issues. I will be breeding more for egg color than SOP, but there are a few flaws that need to come out. There's a guy in Athens that sells decent Wade Jeane birds, and one in Augusta that sells Davis line. Both guys have birds that have their own faults, but the Augusta eggs are gorgeous. I can PM you some contact numbers if you want them

Update on the hands-off hatch:
The hatch is over. 22/26 and it's day 23. #22 hatched around 6PM last night, 45 hours after the first hatch. He spent the night in the incubator, and still looked wet and sticky this morning. This tells me that the conditions in the eggs were already starting to deteriorate when he kicked out. No pips on the 4 remaining eggs this morning, so time to shut down. Anything that hatches from this point forward is likely to have issues. The other 4 eggs are tossed, no eggtopsies. They didn't hatch, and they weren't meant to hatch. I have gotten over wanting to see what happened. I know they were developed going into lockdown, and they didn't hatch, that's all I need to know. I got 22 beautiful, healthy chicks, and I'm happy with that

Congrats on the babies. That's a great rate!! As of this morning I have 11 eggs, hoping to be up to 14-15 by dusk tonight and have everything I am going to set by tomorrow evening.

 

[WVduckchick]

Update on the hands-off hatch:
The hatch is over. 22/26 and it's day 23. #22 hatched around 6PM last night, 45 hours after the first hatch. He spent the night in the incubator, and still looked wet and sticky this morning. This tells me that the conditions in the eggs were already starting to deteriorate when he kicked out. No pips on the 4 remaining eggs this morning, so time to shut down. Anything that hatches from this point forward is likely to have issues. The other 4 eggs are tossed, no eggtopsies. They didn't hatch, and they weren't meant to hatch. I have gotten over wanting to see what happened. I know they were developed going into lockdown, and they didn't hatch, that's all I need to know. I got 22 beautiful, healthy chicks, and I'm happy with that

Awesome. Did you even candle the last 4 for movement? I'm guessing not. I like your approach more and more every day. Although I'm not sure I could toss one without knowing for sure first.

 

[AmyLynn2374]

Awesome. Did you even candle the last 4 for movement? I'm guessing not. I like your approach more and more every day. Although I'm not sure I could toss one without knowing for sure first.

I know I couldn't...lol

 

[scflock]

Ewww...lol

Congrats on the babies. That's a great rate!! As of this morning I have 11 eggs, hoping to be up to 14-15 by dusk tonight and have everything I am going to set by tomorrow evening.

If you're setting tomorrow, there's no way I'm going to be able to tag along. I get the feeling this thread will be around for a while, so I'm looking forward to watching the humidity queen in action. Careful, though, the bar is high

 

[AmyLynn2374]

If you're setting tomorrow, there's no way I'm going to be able to tag along. I get the feeling this thread will be around for a while, so I'm looking forward to watching the humidity queen in action. Careful, though, the bar is high

I said I was hoping to have what I want to set collected by tomorrow night. I was going to check in with you and see what your end was looking like and if there was a chance you'd be anywhere ready I was going to hold them a couple days, if not then I'll set. I dodn't start collecting until this Tuesday, so I'm good with a week until this coming Tuesday.

 

[scflock]

Awesome. Did you even candle the last 4 for movement? I'm guessing not. I like your approach more and more every day. Although I'm not sure I could toss one without knowing for sure first.

Nope. They didn't hatch. Off they go.
Last weekend reaffirmed why I do this. I had a broody silkie walk out with her new babies. She had 3 eggs remaining, and as I was literally tossing them into the woods, one started cheeping loudly. Wasn't even pipped. Against my own better judgement, I peeled away the shell until I could see that the yolk was absorbed and the chick was not attached to the shell any more, it had just gotten too cold after mama hopped off the nest. There was no way it was going to kick free, so I totally hatched it and took it inside and set up the brooder. This was Saturday. By sunday I was making shoes for the curled toes. It was a sweet chick, but had issues, could barely stand, and only walked backwards when it did. By Monday it couldn't stand up any more. By Tuesday it couldn't roll over off its back, was constantly cheeping, and couldn't open one eye. I had to take it outside and cull it.
No, I didn't candle the other 4