soon to be first time Chicken Parents

[DroolBubbles]

We are relatively new to BYC but this has been a tremendous help in our recent adventure. We posted about our incubator that we built using a few ideas from here and our own tinkering skills and our coop is almost ready and based closely on another coop I saw on here.

So on to the real story. We ordered 8 Amaraucana eggs and 8 Silkies off of Ebay so we were pessemistic about hatch rates from the start but we gave it a go anyway. We were too busy at the time for a 4 hour round trip to find local eggs so we ordered at the time. I will pick up local eggs if we do this again. The day 18 candling showed 3 chicks moving and 2 eggs fully developed (compared to the moving ones) and there was 2 more we couldn't tell about so we have 7 in lockdown. This whole thing has been a learning point and a lot of fun. Day 21 is not until tomorrow but alas, there are two cracked shells in the incubator. I have read on other threads that people like to follow along with the hatchings so here you go. Here is the first pip of our first clutch of eggs. I will try to stay up on events as they happen.

 

[DroolBubbles]

Two more shells are cracking outwards although I would not call them "pipped" yet. The first one has a nice little hole in it and we can see her breathing in there. Not a one is making a sound, should that be a reason for concern?

 

[smchickfarm]

no, don't be concerned. It is hard work getting out of those shells. They do take breaks and it can take 24-36 hours from pip to hatch..

Hang in there , be patient and enjoy!!!!

 

[DroolBubbles]

The first two to crack their shells gave out last night to our disappointment. The third one to crack hatched some time this morning about 6 am, 3 hours earlier then 21 days exactly. All the remaining eggs were candled to confirm ZERO movement. They are still in just in case of a miracle or I really have NO idea what I am doing (possible). So after spending about $60-70 on our incubator and another $30 or so on eggs we are left with one beautiful chick named "Penny".

 

[DroolBubbles]

Our incubator is a little cramped so I moved Penny to the brooder to finish drying out. We bought 3 chicks at the Co-op last weekend to hedge our bets (I was pesemistic about our hatch since the 14 day candling). I decided to put Penny in a bowl to separate her from her sisters until she was ready, and you can see how that plan worked out.

 

[DroolBubbles]

We are trying this again with locally bought eggs. I can tell the difference immediately. None of the air sacs are broken loose for starters but also the air sacs that can be identified when candling are tiny compared to what we saw with the shipped eggs. These are about 3/8" to 1/2" compared to the 3/4" and larger in the shipped eggs. I assume this is indicative of the freshness to some degree. We have also moved toward the dry incubation method and are currently holding 30-32%. I understand this works a lot better then the oft reccomended 50% that we did last time. For the moment my biggest fear is that they might all actually hatch. We have the 4 chicks and 22 eggs batin' and all we want is 4-5 layers. Hmmmm.