Simulated Natural Nest Incubation~Experiment #1 So it begins....

[Beekissed]

I read where another lady stopped candling because her hatch rate went up when she stopped, so I thought that would be a good thing to do. I know a hen will do her own removal of eggs not progressing but I've also seen them sit on eggs that never made it and had rotten material in them, so I'm going to go with the least intervention as possible. I'm not going to lift these eggs up much..just turn them while they are still lying on the surface of the nest.

Bringing humidity up is as simple as sprinkling water into that soil around the edges of the nest..the plastic bag under the soil will hold it well and keep it from drying out.

Wow! Lot's of great advice! I thank you all for taking an interest in this experiment. I know it's not much like anything to do with being contained inside an incubator so that shifts all the controls a good bit, but it is rather like a broody hen on a nest so I'll have to shoot for that as much as possible and see if it works out.

I removed the "hen" from the nest and the feather padding, to keep the temps down. I was on the lowest setting on the thermostat and holding on a steady 100, so I placed more feathers between the heating pad and the eggs and that nudged the thermometer down just the tiniest smidge. I'm exactly on 99.5 right now, at long last. All that's in the nest is the a layer of feathers over the eggs and the heating pad. The ambient temps are 50* in the room.

When the chicks develop and on that 13 day that Fred was talking about, I'll have to place an insulator between the heating pad and the eggs for that spike in temps...I've got the feather pillow/pad that works well for that~tried it out in the heating pad testing in the past few days.

 

[JesNflock]

Well....I've got it all set up and now it's step out on faith time, so I prayed over the nest and will see what God can do.

I'm experimenting with incubation in a natural as can get setting to see if I can hatch chicks in this manner. This is my first foray into incubating chicks, so total newbie here. I've read up, watched videos, listened for years about other hatches but this will be my first.

I got to thinking about how we all do it artificially and about how the hen does it and thought maybe I could blend the two and get good results. I'm using soil/leaf litter as my humidity source and will check it when I turn the eggs to see if it needs moistening. I'm using a heating pad for heat and a feather filled pad for an insulator over that pad.

I will be turning the eggs by hand a couple of times a day and also letting air get into the nest at that time. I'll also rotate eggs from out on the edge to in to the middle, randomly, much like a hen would do when she shuffles eggs and I'll do this as I turn. I've not marked the eggs for turning...I intend to just "peck" them a little to roll them, much like a hen does. It will all be very random, much like a hen...she doesn't mark an X or an O to make sure she is turning them all equally and fully.

At day seven or eight I'll candle just one egg from the middle of the nest to see if a chick is developing, but after that I will not handle them or pick them up...just use my finger nail to move them in the nest for "turning". I won't take out any eggs that are not developing because I won't know they are or if they are not. I'll just go on faith on that part of the incubation.

***These eggs are from pullets that are mated to a very young and not very vigorous cockerel and I've seen fertility in some of the eggs we've been eating but not all, so this hatch may be affected by these variances...but I still expect a good outcome. *****

Step 1: Lined a cardboard box with a trash bag and placed moist bedding/soil/leaf litter from my coop in a layer over that. Placed a couple of handfuls of snow on top of that for more moisture.



Step 2: Made a "nest" on top of that with some fresh hay.





Step 3: Eggs collected over the past week from three different breeds of chickens, will choose the most uniform, large, clean eggs from the group~chose 18 eggs for this hatch.

Heat source for "broody": 12x15 in. heating pad with 6 digital settings.

Thermometer: Meat thermometer that has been tested against my old mercury style thermometer for the last 2 days and is always right on the mark, exactly.







Step 4: Arranged eggs in nest with pointy ends toward the middle, WRs/Dels/BAs from left to right. Covered lightly with disinfected rooster feathers for added insulation and humidity control.





Step 5: Inserted meat thermometer into side of box, placing tip in middle of the nest, between two eggs....you can just see the pointy metal tip in the pic above.



Step 6: Covered eggs with fake broody heat, warm side down.


Step 7: Placed box on windowsill in the coolest room in the house...gets slightly warmer when evening sun hits it but have placed a feather padded pillow between box and window to insulate against direct warmth on the box. I want some temp fluctuation because that's how it is out on a real broody nest, so I'm not much into controlling all ambient temps. Have old thermometer standing by to monitor temps in the window sill so I can compare them to the temps in the nest.







Step 8: Covered heat source with a feather quilted(below) and fleece covered pad~The Little Red Hen~who will later also brood the chicks while stretched over a fence wire frame and holding the heating pad in her "belly". The chicks will get under her much like they do the heat plates for chicks...but for a much cheaper price and a more controllable temperature gauge.




So...that's my experiment. I was going to conduct this on the floor of my coop but for this first time I'd like to monitor it more closely to see how widely the temperatures fluctuate in this setting. That's why I chose the coldest room, so that it would still be much like outdoors. I'll run the vaporizer in that room each time it rains or snows outside to simulate the increased moisture in the air and will also add a little moisture to the "ground" under the nest when needed. This morning at daybreak this room was 40 degrees in that windowsill. It was around 5 degrees outside at that time.

SO eggcited Bee!! I can't wait to see how your "broody" hatch goes!!!

 

[Beekissed]

I think that last tweak might have done it....a steady 99.5 and holding. I think I've reached warm eggs/warm nest zen temps and should be able to keep those pretty steady. I'll check it later tonight when the ambient temps in the room drop after the wood stove is banked up for the night. For now, the variances in temps have been so tiny that I'm thinking things should go well for keeping it stabilized.

I'll be going out of town for two days and nights at the end of the week and so will just have to have faith in this system by then...that's all anyone can do, really, is just to set it up and see what happens. I'll be candling at the beginning of next week and that should tell me something.

 

[AmericanMom]

This is sooo interesting!!! Good luck! I really think it will work!!!!!!
What a great idea!

 

[Beekissed]

This is sooo interesting!!! Good luck! I really think it will work!!!!!!
What a great idea!

Thank you! I think it will work too. After reading up on incubation a good bit I got to thinking that it really couldn't match a hen going off into the weeds and coming back later with a whole string of chicks and then thinking about what exactly goes on out there in those weeds. No humidity controls, no thermometers, no lock downs, egg turners or candling...just a bird, a nest and some eggs with all the variances in ambient temps and humidity all around her. I thought, "What if I could do that too? Just copy the best incubator in the world and see what happens...."

And so here we are, seeing what happens.

 

[CoMtnGal]

Very interesting and cool idea. Following.

Connie

 

[enola]

I usually candle at day 10 and lock down.

 

[Beekissed]

You know..I've studied all the pics of what they look for in the eggs when they candle, even in the brown eggs and I don't see much difference than when looking at a regular egg. There's a distinct chance I'll look at that egg and go, "Hmmmmm.....ahem....hmmmmmmm.....um...wellllll....yep. Looks like an egg still."

 

[AandAranch]

Looking forward to the results of your experiment and hoping for the best.

 

[Beekissed]

Thank you! I think maybe out there in BYC land the hills are ringing with the laughter of experienced hatchers as they read this thread....but what if it works?

I love the possibilities in life....

If it works, I'll use the same method to brood the chicks and I'm going to place the brooder in the coop where it can get natural lighting. It would be much cheaper than paying for an Ecoglow or Premier heating plate brooder.