Starting my second hatch - QUESTION

[Bama-chicks]

I observed, in my previous and first hatch, when the first chick hatched, it stumbled, tripped, bumped, climbed, etc ALL OVER the other eggs. I was just reading that you don't want to be turning the eggs anymore once they are ready to hatch so they are in a prime direction to start breaking the shell and zip.
What are ways to avoid new babies flipping out all over other eggs causing them to roll around out of position?
I'm using Little Giant incubator with automatic turner
2nd hatch includes 11 guinea eggs and 2 turkey eggs.

 

[NatJ]

I've hatched eggs a few times, and this is what I've noticed:

Chicks stumbling around did not seem to cause trouble for the other eggs.

Chicks seem to sleep more and move around less in the dark (at night).

Once there are two or more chicks, I think I've seen them snuggle together, and do less stumbling (not none, just less.)

If you put the eggs in baskets or mesh bags to keep track of which chicks hatch from which eggs, that does reduce how much the chicks can stumble around. But there are other disadvantages of that (like how much space it takes up in the incubator), so I would probably not try that if you are only interested in keeping chicks from stumbling over other eggs.

Of course you can take out chicks, but opening the incubator frequently also causes problems.

On the whole, I think chicks stumbling over eggs will cause less trouble than most ways of stopping them. But I definitely would turn off the lights at night, rather than leaving the light on all night.