So I know staggered hatches are not great & to be avoided BUT just 2 of these eggs are good at 18 days (started w/ 7 - 3 clears, 2 late quitters -- weird) I put them in the bator in this cutaway foam egg carton, thinking maybe I could contain the mess & the rolling around. I left the turners in for my other eggs which are day 13. I know if there is a way a baby chick can get tangled & stuck in something they will find the way, so I'm kind of concerned that all kinds of unforseeable things will go wrong if I leave the turners in. I'm not too worried about humidity b/c I've been running the bator pretty dry, & I can also dry it off some between hatching & setting up the second set, hopefully. Any thoughts? Would y'all just quit turning the other eggs (8 good ones) at this point? Don't have a hatcher.
If your eggs start hatching at day 21 it should be okay to stop turning then, as the other eggs would be on day 16. . . I did stagger my hatch slightly last time so stopped turning one set of eggs on day 16 1/2 and they were fine. . .
Well, I'm doing my 2nd hatch and it's gonna be staggerd because I have duck eggs. I'm going to pull out all of the trays tomorrow night but one.... it will have the viable duck eggs. The rest will be candled, and put into cartons to hatch. I should start seeing baby chickens on Friday evening and they should probably stop hatching by next Tuesday night... then another week and the duck eggs will hatch. Good luck.
It should be fine. You might want to raise the humidity a little bit for the three days that the eggs are due to pip/hatch... it won't hurt the other eggs for that short time. Good luck!!
