Staggard hatches?

[howfunkyisurchicken]

I don't have many hens laying at the moment, so I've been pretty much collecting what I can get.
I've got 10 eggs due to hatch 7/23, 1 due 7/24, 2 due 7/25 and 2 due 7/26. I'm making myself NOT put anymore in the incubator after today
I don't have anything to use as a hatcher, so everyone has to stay together. Will locking down my first batch of eggs mess up the others that are a few days behind? I've done a staggard hatch before, but the eggs were only a day apart.
I'm hatching Silkies, so I usually wait until I see a pip or hear chirping to lockdown (if I don't, they seem to pip, zip some and die). If I do it that way, will it maybe give my later eggs a better chance?
I'm just trying to figure out the best way to go about all of this :/
Thanks for any help you staggard hatchers can offer. MANY thanks in advance!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Suggestions to help with staggered hatches. First, get a hatcher. It wouldn’t really help that much with these eggs, but if you insist on doing staggered hatches in the future, get one. It will be worth it.

Second, store the eggs for a while and start one group at a time. You can store eggs for a week without hurting their hatchability just by using basic care. There is absolutely no reason to put eggs in the incubator every day unless you just enjoy making your life harder. Some people thrive on the drama. So get a hatcher and start one batch a week or enjoy the drama.

None of that helps you on this hatch. I can see four things you may be concerned about on this hatch. First, turning. For this hatch, it’s not a problem for you. Chicken eggs don’t really need to be turned after 14 days. So don’t even concern yourself about turning the later eggs. Just stop turning them all when you go into lockdown with the first.

Second is humidity. The eggs need to lose a certain amount of moisture during incubation, but we need to up the humidity during hatch. There is a fairly wide range of humidities that work. This may cause a problem for your later eggs, but I’d raise the humidity for all of them when I went into lockdown for the first. First, you have 10 eggs in that first batch and a lot less in the later ones. so the first set is more important. Also, I think you are a whole lot less likely to harm the later eggs by raising the humidity than harm the early eggs by raising the humidity. Not the ideal situation, but manageable.

The third issue is that the chicks that hatch first will smear all kinds of nasty gunk on the later eggs as they are crawling around. It’s not real likely with yours since hatch times are not spread that far apart, but that could cause problems with your later eggs. It might help bacteria get inside the eggs which would kill the developing chick, plus maybe stink up your house. Can you build a fence maybe out of hardware cloth to separate the early hatchers from the later? Or maybe get wire or plastic baskets or make some out of hardware cloth that you can set over the eggs to keep the chicks from sliming the later eggs?

The fourth issue is that by opening the incubator during lockdown you can possibly shrink-wrap a chick in an egg that has pipped. This does not happen each and every time you open the incubator but it does occasionally happen. Chicks can go three days without food and water because they absorb the yolk so you don’t need to get them out that often, but your hatch is spread over more than 3 days. I’d wait until that second day’s single egg of yours has hatched or has had time to hatch, take the chicks out, and spritz the remaining eggs with lukewarm water just to keep them from drying out. That misting is probably not really necessary but I consider it a reasonable precaution, especially if an egg has pipped. You are not trying to drown the egg, just lightly mist it.

Good luck. These staggered hatches are nerve-wracking and there are certainly risks associated with them, but they often work out reasonably well.