Staggered incubation

[Lovie]

Does anyone have luck with staggered hatches? I am a newbie and do not want to stagger but only have one peahen. If I save up eggs and then begin the 28 day incubation, I don't want any eggs in the meantime to be wasted and 28 days would be to long to save them. Thank you for any ideas or input

 

[SunHwaKwon]

So you're using an incubator, correct? I find staggering is easiest if you have two incubators. I do the same with my guineas and set eggs every ten days and that seems to be a good rotation. They also have a 28 day incubation period. Of course, guinea eggs are much smaller. Does the penhen lay every day? Because then you would need it to hold up to 28 eggs and I assume they are much larger than chicken eggs. Are you going to use an automatic turner or turn by hand? That makes a difference as far as how many it can hold.

 

[Lovie]

My peahen has not started laying this season so I was trying to get my ducks in a row so to speak, lol. They lay every 2-3 days if I understand correctly. I would like to use an egg turner but am unsure if they would fit appropriately. I have considered two incubators, I just don't want to jump head first into this and be out a million, but it might be a little late for that

 

[SunHwaKwon]

Okay so I did a bit of a timeline outline and it looks like the most you would end up with in there would be 16, assuming you are adding 4 eggs a week, and that would be when you add your forth batch and that first batch is in "lockdown". If you are hand turning, then the turning thing is not an issue since you just would not turn those eggs. The humidity is the problem, but seeing as you would only have about four hatching at a time its hard to justify buying a second incubator, though assuming you sell them all you would recoup that expense pretty quickly. It looks like pea fowl incubate at a higher humidity through out the process so that may work in your favor and you can play the actual hatch days by ear (as far as humidity goes) and use of any issues you run into with the first hatch group and make adjustments accordingly. That first batch is always iffy and stressful regardless, if its your first time hatching. Upping the humidity won't be such an issue with the second batch that you put in, but the third batch would be subjected to the higher hatch humidity twice and I don't know if that will result in them not losing enough moisture.

ETA I just reread that. Let me know if any of that doesn't make sense and I will clarify. What I mean about the third (and subsequent) batch(es) is they will have to be in high humidity while the first batch of eggs is hatching, then again when the second batch of eggs is hatching and that may or may not pose a problem.