Hi. I bought 12 D'Uccle bantams from a breeder trying to downsize on her breeds, and she hadn't collected eggs for about a week. Well, one of the hens was sitting on 4 eggs, and she candled them for me and 2 had embryos. I brought everyone home(along with some eggs from her young silkies to hatch. They were free btw) and stuck the eggs in my incubator. I have 9 eggs in it right now. 5 silkie, 2 of my own eggs, and the 2 D'Uccle eggs. The first 7 just started incubating yesterday, but one of the D'Uccle eggs is about 5-6 days along, and the other is about 4 days...I guess I'm just not really sure how I should go about doing this. This is only my third time incubating with an incubator. I did a staggered hatch last time I hatched, but it was only one egg about 2-3 days behind...I'm worried about raising the humidity for the first 2 hatchers. I don't want the others to drown or something...Should I just keep turning everyone and keep the humidity the same until I see an external pip on the first one, then raise the humidity, and lower it again until I see one on the other egg, then raise humidity again, then lower it again until lockdown for the last 7 eggs? And to recap, the eggs are on day 1, day 4(roughly), and day 6(roughly). Day one eggs-5 silkie and 2 EE cross Day 4- one D'Uccle Day 6- one D'Uccle I only have one incubator btw. Does anyone think this will be ok? The breeder said it should be fine, but I'm worried...
I'm not a fan of staggered hatches but it is what it is and people do it successfully. The good news is, they are all within a week, so that makes it easier. Eggs do not need to be turned after 2 weeks. I always stop turning at the end of day 13. So once they hit two weeks, you don't have to worry about turning. You can delay lockdown until they internally pip if you'd like to. If the air cells are a good size, you can go into lockdown normally. I would make that decision based on air cells personally. If the silkie eggs are small, you may be ok going into lockdown at normal time. I had to run a higher humidity for my silkie eggs through the incubation. And then drop it back down for the last 7. The first two may be close enough together that by the time the first one externally pips and then hatches the other might be at least internally pipped.
