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

[Gypsy07]

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Ha. Haha. HAHAHA!!! Goatsoap, I love you! You must be the king of hatchers! Ignorance is bliss alright! Perhaps you also didn't know that Polish seem to be harder to hatch than a lot of other breeds, and that most folk really absolutely HATE LG bators for their iffy thermostats and mostly terrible hatch rates. So you've been doing constant staggered hatches ever since you got the bator? That's amazing! What percentage are you managing to hatch out? And what is your humidity?

You must think I've been over-complicating things with all the 'what if's and 'not sure what to do's I've been blathering on about. And maybe I have been...

Thank you so much for stopping by to comment. Please write up your own staggered hatching experiences. I'd love to read them...

 

[macdoogle]

Oh no. I've got an LG. Was reading through this site since I set 16 Auracana(at least they claim to be) yesterday and am waiting for some BCMS due on Feb 24. Wanted to know if the stagger would be OK. That part sounds doable but now to hear my bator stinks. It's my first hatch not counting the previous disaster in a home made bator. (I just want to forget about that one as if it never happened.) Well I'm commited now so will hope for the best. Good lock to all of you. I don't watch TV anymore, just the temp and humidity on the bator and ,of course, read posts on BYC.

 

[critterranch]

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dont worry it can be done. i did all mine in an LG still air. no more tv for me either. read read read

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[Gypsy07]

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Well, I wouldn't worry too much. I think they're actually quite reasonable bators. The problem seems to be that the thermostat is very finicky and it's extremely difficult to adjust the temperature just a tiny amount. From what I've read, it sounds like once you get the temperature stabilised and you don't need to do any more adjustments, they're fine. Maybe just not the best bator for total newbies to get good hatches from. You could always start a thread asking for advice from people who have them and like them, you'd probably get loads of replies. Good luck with your eggs!

Edited to add: Yeah, check Critter's comment. They have just done a pretty good staggered hatch in an LG.

 

[Gypsy07]

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Well, I wasn't sure how else to describe them. They are total zoomers. Really funny to watch. Crack-weasels. LOL!

 

[Gypsy07]

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Yeah, the drowning thing used to confuse me too. Took me a while to get it straight in my head. Chicks absolutely can't drown until they pip internally into the air sac and start breathing air. High humidity for a few days early on in the incubation will not kill the chick at that time. But if you don't reduce the humidity in the later stages so that the right amount of moisture is lost from the egg by the time it gets to lockdown, the chick could drown when it's trying to hatch. A very high humidity through lockdown also can't cause chicks to drown. If the egg has lost the correct amount of moisture between days 1 and 18, a really high humidity for lockdown will not cause the egg to gain more moisture inside.

Here's the bit about humidity from the Brinsea Incubation Handbook:

"Constant accuracy of humidity is less essential than that of temperature. Ideally, the egg needs to lose 13-15% of its weight between the time of laying and pipping. Fairly wide tolerances in humidity are bearable (though not ideal) as long as the chick ends up having lost the correct amount of weight by the time of hatching. Correction can be made in later stages for errors earlier."

 

[Gypsy07]

Latest update:

Okay, so I had one pip yesterday, then another. Way over twelve hours later they hadn't done much of anything, I couldn't hear them cheeping any more, and I was starting to worry. But I left them alone, went out for the evening, didn't check on them when I came in after midnight, and woke up this morning to two tiny new chicks in my bator. Woohoo! Clean shells, no blood or extra moisture, nice healthy looking well formed chicks. Phew!

I need to get my humidity back down as soon as possible for the other nine eggs in there, so I floated the other two that are due to hatch, just to check on them. I had one definitely wriggling around and one that was most likely dead. Put them both back in the bator and an hour later the wriggling one had pipped. Looks like I'm going to get three then. That's out of six fertile eggs though, so not as good as the first hatch which was five chicks out of six fertile eggs. So it does look like the staggered hatching has affected the hatch rate quite badly. I don't mind though, as long as the chicks I do get are nice and healthy.

 

[sheila3935]

You all are gutsy to do staggered hatches in one incubator. I have an Lg that I use for incubating and a hovabator for hatching. The hovabator just seems to hold humidity better during lockdown. My LG holds temps just fine.

 

[Gypsy07]

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Well, I guess if I had paid a lot of money for rare and delicate eggs to be shipped hundreds of miles to me then I'd be a LOT more careful and about a million times more nervous doing this. But I have an almost limitless supply of eggs from my own hens to mess about with. So I can afford to experiment a bit and not be too worried about the result. And I just KNEW loads of people with LGs would pop up and say how much they liked them after what I said before. LOL! See, Macdoogle, you'll be fine!

 

[Gypsy07]

WOOHOO!!! The third one out was another chipmunk! I was really hoping for another of those little guys.

I float tested the last egg again to be sure it wasn't moving, then cracked it open. Yup, dead in shell, looks like a few days ago. Its legs were soft feeling, like the bones hadn't uite finished forming, and it still had a huge yolk sac. Oh well. Nine more eggs to go! They go into lockdown a week on Monday. I'm going to hazard a guess at five chicks, maybe six. Which would be fine by me. Cause if by some miracle I get all nine, I'll be like, 'Oh sh*t, where am I going to put them all?'