Staggered hatch: **UPDATE** All finished. Final results on page 5

[Gypsy07]

Goatsoap - Your Polish chick is cute and very funny. He looks like he's shouting at the camera. Keep up the good hatches!

Critter - ANOTHER 40 eggs?

 

[Gypsy07]

Well, I've just gone into my third and final lockdown of the Grand Staggering Experiment. Of the last ten eggs I set, eight have made it this far. One had a blood ring and one got mysteriously bashed on day 8 and despite being patched up with candle wax, didn't survive. I think they're doing pretty good considering the bator has now had two separate lots of chicks hatch out in it and it hasn't been cleaned. I'm surprised I didn't have more blood rings.

In a few days I'll be able to look at all my results and see how old eggs compare with fresh eggs and washed eggs compare with unwashed eggs, hatch-wise.

So far I'm not seeing any difference though. With my statistically non-significant total of 24 eggs set. LOL!

 

[Gypsy07]

Okay, that's my grand staggered hatching experiment over. (Finally!) Four chicks hatched over a 32 hour period, and the other four didn't do anything. My experience with these eggs is that if they're going to hatch, they hatch quickly, all together and pretty much on time. So as soon as the fourth one was all fluffed up and I could see I had no more pips, I pulled the last four eggs out and candled, then float tested, then just broke them open. They were almost fully developed but died before pipping internally. I think I'm going to put the hiigh death rate down to the highly unsanitary incubator conditions, as it's really pretty stinky in there by now...

So I have 12 chicks in total. Here's the final breakdown:

Of 24 eggs in total that I set, 22 were fertile. (She hadn't laid for two months before Xmas so I'm not surprised that the first couple of eggs she laid after her winter break were duds. When I break them open now, fertility is 100%. Woohoo!)

Of the 22 fertile eggs, I'm not going to count the one that got bashed. That was just random bad luck.

So my overall hatch rate was 12/21, or 57%.

First batch of eggs I got 5/6 , or 83%. Second batch of eggs I got 3/6, or 50%. Third batch of eggs I got 4/9, or 44%. The lower hatch rates could be due to the extreme fluctuations in humidity for the second and third batches of eggs between days 3 and 10 of their incubation, or it could be due to the increasingly grubby state of my incubator after each hatch.

Interestingly, I didn't notice any big difference in hatch rates between fresh eggs and eggs that had been stored for a fortnight. In the first two batches, the two oldest eggs hatched while others didn't. In the third batch, the second oldest egg hatched while the two freshest ones didn't. Next experiment will be with even older eggs I think!

The washing/not washing thing: I rinsed some eggs in hot water, I washed some in a hot dilute bleach solution before rinsing them, and I left some unwashed. This one is hard to call though, as I rinsed all of the first batch of eggs, which obviously had the most ideal and cleanest incubating conditions, and I only bleached one egg in the last batch, which obviously had the worst conditions. Fot the second and third batch, I alternated rinsing/not washing with each egg as it was collected, so the results should not be affected by the age of the eggs.

Yes, of course the results are still skewed. But here they are anyway:

First batch of eggs: Of 6 rinsed in hot water - 5 hatched, 1 was DIS with no internal pip

Second batch of eggs: Of 3 bleached - 2 hatched, 1 had blood ring.
Of 3 not washed - 1 hatched, 1 was early quitter, 1 was DIS with no internal pip

Third batch of eggs: Of 1 bleached - 1 hatched
Of 4 rinsed - 2 hatched, 2 were DIS with no internal pip
Of 4 not washed - 1 hatched, 1 had a blood ring, 2 were DIS with no internal pip.

So if you discount the first batch and just look at the second and third batches, cause their incubating conditions were similarly non-ideal, I had 4 eggs each of bleached, rinsed and unwashed. The hatch rates were 3/4 for the bleached ones, 2/4 for the rinsed ones, and 1/4 for the unwashed ones. Obviously that's far too small a test number to be able to say anything much about anything, and the experiment had loads of other variables anyway, but those results are interesting enough that I think I'll be doing more experiments with washing at some point in the future.

Now then... Is anyone still reading this? Or am I waffling away to myself?

I bet if there's anyone still here, you're just hanging on for some pictures, aren't you? LOL!

Okay, here are the last four little fuzzybutts:

Whoops! Edited cause I got some of my sums wrong...

 

[pixie546]

Hi! So I've been lurking behind the scene and reading this thread with great interest! I am doing my first hatch with 19 eggs on day 9 in an LG still-air. So far it's 100% fertility and they all seem to be progressing properly!!!!!!!!!!!! I let it run for 3 days before I put the eggs in to stabilize it and it's been steady as she goes at 100F on my digital and about the same on the little thermometer that came with it. I haven't had to turn the knob, just take out or put in the vent plugs to bump up or drop the temp. It's been pretty low stress so far! I am turning 3x daily and adding water when the humidity drops below 25%. So it's ranged from 58%-25%. My silkie just started laying again after a broody patch and a molt, so I'm excited to try to hatch some of her eggies.

BUT---- I'm impatient (aren't we all?) and don't want to wait till this hatch is over, so I am thinking about putting 5 of her eggs (she's an egg-a-day-er!) in the LG on day 10. I've read that this is not too bad as long as the humidity is brought down after the first batch hatches, to kind of even things out. I can check the size of the air sacs pretty easily with my mini-Maglite, without having to take everyone out for a candle. So I think I can monitor these silkie eggs pretty well. I should know before lockdown on the first batch if they are fertile and developing. Maybe I am worrying for nothing! So, we'll see! I'm nervouse about lockdown and hatch. I don't want to drown them but I don't want them to be too dry, either! Ack!

 

[critterranch]

so glad your got your fuzzy butts.

your hatch was a amesome staggered hatch.

as for the vent plugs i do the same thing. i use the vent plugs to help stabilize temp. i have all 3 bators in back bedroom. a bit cool at night have to have both plugs in a night.

 

[milakegrl]

Thank you so much for this information!! I thought I killed my eggs with low temp over the first couple days - now, having candled today (day 5) I think I've got couple growing! Yeah!! But, in my depression over thinking I killed them, I ordered 4 more eggs-which should be here soon. So they will be around a week behind. I can do it!





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[pixie546]

My original eggs are on Day 13- I'm going to candle tomorrow! Yesterday I added 10 more- 8 silkie and 2 polish. I'm not sure on the fertility of these- we have 3 silkie roosters, but they are teenagers and still getting the hang of it. Sometimes they jump on backwards! So by Day 4 I'll know more. I put them in a cut down egg carton so that the hatching chicks won't roll them about. Also I can turn them quickly during lockdown because I propped one side up with a block. I think I'll have enough time for the new eggs to dry out a bit after the high humidity of the first hatch. Soooo, March 15, first batch due, March 26. This is my first time hatching and I do a staggered hatch in one incubator! I guess I'm just asking for it!

 

[david's grammy]

1 GAL SAID THIS ...I THOUGHT IT WAS SO FUNNY, BUT SO TRUE:

I don't watch TV anymore, just the temp and humidity on the bator and ,of course, read posts on BYC.

I have done a staggered hatch and it worked pretty well. I just put the later ones in an egg- carton bottom and propped up the end, changing ends twice a day.This is when I had put others in lock down and off of the turners.When the first hatch was finished , I but the second hatch back on the turner. I hatch in egg cartons, so not much mess.I never wash the eggs, figure hen does not wash them. If they are really dirty I wipe off with damp paper towel. This is my 3rd season. Some hatches are perfect .....others really bad..... seems like conditions are about the same, but just happens ...that's life , I guess