Starting a hatch September 21....hatch along?

[Tanichca]

I've got rolling eggs! I check in every hour, and three eggs are in different locations from where I put them. The incubator is very, very hard to wiggle, and the wire incubator floor is even and flat. And just now, I swear I saw an egg wiggle, and heard two loud chirps! It's day 19, temp is 100.6 and humidity is 64. e

 

[LukeandAli]

Here are my five that hatched yesterday. The little yellow guys are from a leghorn mama and a white giant daddy. The darker chicks are from my girls!!!! Ah! That makes me so proud! They are from either a barred rock (or dominique?) or buff orpington mamma and either a barred rock (or dominique?) or buff orpington daddy. There is a slight possibility that they could have been covered by our bantam creel-fleur mix rooster, but, I don't think he has covered anyone. He is pretty tiny.

ETA: I still have five more in the incubator that are due today (praying and KMFX that we get more chicks!) and six more that are due next week. I'm not planning to toss any eggs from this week's hatch until next week, just in case they decide to hatch late.

 

[itsren]

I've got rolling eggs! I check in every hour, and three eggs are in different locations from where I put them. The incubator is very, very hard to wiggle, and the wire incubator floor is even and flat. And just now, I swear I saw an egg wiggle, and heard two loud chirps! It's day 19, temp is 100.6 and humidity is 64.

Congrats!

What is everyone's temp at? I have mine at 99.5 - 99.6. Could that be what is giving me problems?

 

[itsren]

Here are my five that hatched yesterday. The little yellow guys are from a leghorn mama and a white giant daddy. The darker chicks are from my girls!!!! Ah! That makes me so proud! They are from either a barred rock (or dominique?) or buff orpington mamma and either a barred rock (or dominique?) or buff orpington daddy. There is a slight possibility that they could have been covered by our bantam creel-fleur mix rooster, but, I don't think he has covered anyone. He is pretty tiny.

ETA: I still have five more in the incubator that are due today (praying and KMFX that we get more chicks!) and six more that are due next week. I'm not planning to toss any eggs from this week's hatch until next week, just in case they decide to hatch late.

So cute! Congrats. I hope the rest of yours hatch, too.

 

[itsren]

pfftt.. I had this long response for you guys on early lockdown, air sac development and optimal tempatures and then my computer shut down and I lost it all. I'll try to type it up again when I get back from college.

Thank you!

 

[highwayhens]

Can I ask for some help and advice? It's day 20 for us, and I guess that day 21 starts this evening. We put our eggs under our broody on Saturday evening, September 22nd, three weeks ago.

We haven't candled since about day 15. I wasn't sure if it was okay to candle them after that, so I haven't.

This morning, I lifted up some of the feathers of our girl, and looked at two eggs. (There are six eggs.) They weren't rocking. I put my ear close, and I havn't heard any cheeping, but of course a chicken is probably pretty good soundproofing.

Any thoughts? Should I candle tonight? I could be careful to not alter the orientation of the eggs.

Thanks!

 

[cochins1088]

Can I ask for some help and advice? It's day 20 for us, and I guess that day 21 starts this evening. We put our eggs under our broody on Saturday evening, September 22nd, three weeks ago.

We haven't candled since about day 15. I wasn't sure if it was okay to candle them after that, so I haven't.

This morning, I lifted up some of the feathers of our girl, and looked at two eggs. (There are six eggs.) They weren't rocking. I put my ear close, and I havn't heard any cheeping, but of course a chicken is probably pretty good soundproofing.

Any thoughts? Should I candle tonight? I could be careful to not alter the orientation of the eggs.

Thanks!

You can candle if you would like, but since they are under a broody hen, I would personally leave them alone and let the mother hen do her job. They only rock and peep every so often, so don't be alarmed if you didn't see or hear them at that moment. I can stare down the incubator for 5 minutes and see nothing, then go back to my bed and suddenly hear a peep in which I run right back. So if you do decide to candle, be careful to keep the same basic orientation of the egg by the time you are done, maybe mark an x on the top side. On day 20 you should be looking for a completely dark egg with an air sac. You may be able to see beaks moving around in the air sac if they have internally pipped. And you may even come across an external pip in which case you should put that egg back right away. Good Luck with your hatch!

 

[cochins1088]

Congrats!

What is everyone's temp at? I have mine at 99.5 - 99.6. Could that be what is giving me problems?

Is your incubator forced air or still air? If it's forced air then your incubator is right on.

If your incubator is still air, it should be kept at 101.5 degrees. If your incubator is still air and you ran it at 99.5 degrees, your eggs will hatch late.

 

[cochins1088]

OK so with all the questions and concerns about early lockdown, I'd thought I'd share my opinions of what should be done.

If tempatures run a bit too high, your eggs may hatch early and may require a early lockdown. As far as tampatues go, if your incubator is forced air (with a fan) then it should be kept at 99.5 degrees. If your incuabtor is still air (no fan) it should be kept at 101.5 degrees. Any lower or higher will affect your hatch time. Another thing to watch for in inaccurate thermometers. The chicks destroyed one of my theremomters so I went and bought a new one for the next hatch. I kept it at optimal tempature according to the thermomter but when it came to the hatch date, no one hatched. The few that actually did hatch, hatched on days 25 and 26. The thermometer reading was too high whiched caused the eggs to be incubated at a lower tampature. I now keep 3 thermometers in my incubator to be sure of the tempature. When buying a new one, I looked at all the thermometers figuring they should all say the same tempature if they were a accurate as they claimed to be, but no. There was a 10 degreee range! Some said 69 while others read all the way up to 79, way to go for accuracy. So watch the tempatures as they will affect your hatch rate and sometimes thermometers can be inaccurate.

Next is early lockdown. If you believe your chicks are hatching early, you may need to go into early lock down. The main problem with early lockdown is air cell development. Air cells must be properly developed before lockdown otherwise the chicks are greatly at risk. Air cells develop based on the humidity in your incubator. Mant incubator instructions (including mine) say to keep the humidity at 50% for the first 18 days and 70% for the last 3, this is not always right. Optimal humidity depends on your area. When I had the humidity according to what the instructions said, I ended up with a ton of fully formed chicks dead in their shells beacuse they had drowned. I found that my optimal humidity is 35% for the first 18 days and 55-60% for the last 3. So how do you find the optimal humidity? There are 2 ways, one being more accurate then the other. You can use a scale, an egg should lose about 12% of it's mass throughout incubation. I believe there are some good threads out there that describe how to correctly calulate weight loss of an egg. The other way in much more simple, look at the air sacs. I think I posted the same picture earlier in the thread, but I'll post it again. What your air sacs, make sure they correspond with the chart. If the sacs are too large, then increase your humidity, if the sacs are too small, than decrease your humidity. If the air cells aren't properly developed by the time you go into lock down, you are risking drowning some of the chicks. More people have a problem with the humidity being too high rather than too low. So if the air cells are large enough, you can go into a early lockdown.

If your air cells aren't developed enough, but the chicks are looking like they'll hatch early, then you are in quite the situation. I would probably raise the humidity to 50% which isn't too high, but most likly chicks that are hatching won't get shrink wrapped. Also the no turning part of lockdown is fine to go early on. If you stop turning a day or 2 before lcokdown, you won't hurt your chicks. It's really the humidity you have to worry about.

Well thats my bit of advice, I'm not toally sure what the exact questions were, but I hope this helps. And I'll try to answer any other questions the best I can.

Oh, and I have two pips!!

The following photo is simply from google images.

 

[FarmMomof3]

Can I ask for some help and advice? It's day 20 for us, and I guess that day 21 starts this evening. We put our eggs under our broody on Saturday evening, September 22nd, three weeks ago.

We haven't candled since about day 15. I wasn't sure if it was okay to candle them after that, so I haven't.

This morning, I lifted up some of the feathers of our girl, and looked at two eggs. (There are six eggs.) They weren't rocking. I put my ear close, and I havn't heard any cheeping, but of course a chicken is probably pretty good soundproofing.

Any thoughts? Should I candle tonight? I could be careful to not alter the orientation of the eggs.

Thanks!

My eggs which were incubator hatched didn't rock at all.... at least not when i was around. They did chirp though. and i didn't notice rocking until the chicks were pretty much out completely. I have no real experience with broody hens because the one hen we do have that is broody.. just appeared one day with 5 chicks behind her. she went missing for a few weeks... i guess we figured out where she went! lol This hen is NOT to be trifled with... she is a pissy mama and doesn't like it when you go near her babies..Which is good! She kicks the crap out of anyone (dogs, other chickens and humans included) that comes with in a certain amount of space to her babies. lol