Good Luck!!! Definitely lot cheaper to use your own eggs!My first HAL and experience w shipped eggs has been very frustrating and a disaster, to b honest. There were some great learning moments and successes tho. My first batch of the auction won maransut of 15 eggs I ended up w 6 pips. 5 in wrong end. One was in right place, and he had started zipping and I had to go to work. When I got home he had died in shell. One pip didnt start zipping at all and I waited 12 hrs to b sure he wouldnt get out on his own. I read sallys info on last resort helping and tried to follow her advice to the letter. With much patience, I ended up w a hatched chick who didnt look good at all. He laid there w occasional twitches but couldnt even hold his head up and rarely even opened his eyes. To my amazement, he survived the night and finally was up and running after about 24 hrs! He is about a week old now and doing great! With the high costs for the eggs n shipping, he has been named steve, my million dollar chick. Lol. I had also set 5 of my own eggs that I thought were from marilyn n elvis who r white silkies. Imagine my surprise when they came out and were obviously from my mille fleur bantams. I hve just recetly gotten back into chickens and all of these birds are all new. Out of 5 eggs, 1 was clear, and 3 hatched. Not too bad on those for my reentry at hatching.
The next batch up is in lockdown and due to hatch friday. Again mostly Shipped eggs. I do have 1 pip but the numbers already dont look good, as i have already thrown out over half due to clears, bloodrings, and stoppers. I have ayam cemanis, super blue egg layers (brown leghorn / creambars, silkies, chamois spitz. The silkies have been the most frustrating bc only 2 developed at all. The rest were clears. The only good about this batch is that I know I must b doing SOMETHING right bc out of the 4 duck eggs of my own that I set, all four are doing perfect and they will b due next friday. Will let u know how this all turns out but I am not holding my breath on the shipped eggs. Im not giving up so I started another batch of my own eggs. My guineas started laying so a few of those, 4 more duck eggs, 4 ameraucnas, 2 bantams, and 8 of my moms comets/kelso game roo. These comets are from her hen that lays eggs that are as big or bigger than my duck eggs and lay EVERY day without fail. Sorry this is so long. And lastly, I topped this all off by getting attacked by my new royal palm turkey tom a few days ago, lol. Roughed me up pretty good..story posted in turkey talk forum if u care to read..crazy, crazy, lol. So thats it..cross your fingers for me on shipped eggs that r left, plz..I wont b trying those again til I get better at hatching. Its been discouraging but also im encouraged by my rates w my own eggs.
@sally sunshine
Yay!! I can't wait for my daughters classes' eggs to start hatchingWe had five chicks hatch total out of 7 in our classroom! 2 didn't make it. One was a little white silkie, and the rest were rocks! The kids are just thrilled. They are taking turns holding them, and just love them. The best part is watching them sneak over to the little blue chick cage, with a book about chickens, to read to the chicks! It is absolutely precious to watch them. My class is just going crazy with learning fun right now! The kids are having a ball! I have 4 eggs in another surprise incubator that could hatch today.They will love that!
That's a scary spike,Update:
Candled quite a few of our eggs last night day 7
Still haven't counted all of them in the bator. Somewhere around 8 dozen... Yes I said 8 dozen. Never set eggs with fever lol
Day before yesterday I caught the bator up to 113 according to my previously calibrated thermo. You can imagine I freaked this incubator has always been very steady and good to me. I caught it very very quickly and removed the turner(since the incubator is so overfilled we've been turning the whole bator instead of running the turner.) Pulled all the eggs out to cool and placed then each in cartons. I then added a little water and put in the grate tetris-ing nearly all the eggs into one layer this time lower and farther from the heat source. My humidity had gotten down to the 20% mark and into the upper teens that's why I added some water.
The temps have been much more stable since doing this. I have also been able without the turner in to actually rotate the lid of the bator instead of moving the eggs around to try and get a more even natural heat.
Many more of the eggs looked good than I thought they would, I'm hoping to have a good hatch despite the temp spike.
Will probably candle again in a couple of days to pull more clears.
Also if you can believe it. While letting the eggs cool and still a a bronchitis and sinus infection stupor and still feverish. I decided to rotate eating eggs in the fridge which I hadn't cleaned them out and hard-boiled them for the chickens for a couple weeks due to being so sick. While doing this I found silkie eggs belonging to my ladies that went broody... And can you believe I added them to the incubator?! They're a week behind so I guess my hatch is staggered now lol some of them were pretty old so probably won't do anything but it would be nice if they did. We'll see.
That also mean I inadvertently joined the cinco de Mayo Hatch-a-long lol.
I didn't even know it until I looked at the calendar.
Also with the added eggs we're closer to 9 dozen.
Last chicken pic on my phone...
My 6 week old white sport legbar pullet from @Junaid 's pre-Easter test hatch. I'm still looking for the perfect name for her. But I just love her and think she's stunning and oh so sweet!
I would love to accidentally winGood luck!
Seeing the rocking is really awesome! Good luck!
I'm glad you're 2nd,3rd, and fourth hatch are doing better. How do so many people keep accidentally winning auctions around here?
