Starting staggered hatching adventure

[Redhead Rae]

Oh, and it looks like I have a broody girl! This is a BO girl that hasn't been broody before. I think I'm going to give her the 10+ cornish eggs we got this week instead of incubating them myself. I think I'll do some prep today, get a box with straw to put in the broody tote and I'll give her the eggs tonight. I think I might put them in the incubator first for a few hours, so I'm moving warm eggs under her tonight.

 

[aart]

I think I'll do some prep today, get a box with straw to put in the broody tote and I'll give her the eggs tonight.

Do you separate your broody's?
I give them time to settle in new spot, with fakies, before risking eggs.

 

[Redhead Rae]

Do you separate your broody's?
I give them time to settle in new spot, with fakies, before risking eggs.

She's been separated tote for 2-3 days now. If we finds a hen in the nest boxes at bedtime (the nestboxes aren't in the coop) we move her into a broody tote. If she stays on the nest the next day, we leave her. If she is pacing to get out. We let her out. In fact, I didn't even know she was in there. My FIL does the morning feeding and putting them up at night since I have a hard time doing that on a schedule with the toddler. So he put her in there and forgot to tell me. I saw her pop out of the nest box yesterday when I threw some table scraps to the flock. She went back in right after the furor died down.

 

[Redhead Rae]

Today, has been a harrowing one.

At Noon, I lost power. I called the power company and they said they said that the power wouldn't be back on until 6pm.

This was scary to me. I have 3 eggs that are due to hatch today and I had 13 in the starter incubator. My MIL suggested that I take their battery backup for their computers (that they use to give them enough time to shut their computers down when there is a power failure) to power one of the incubators. GREAT. So I moved the two egg carriers that contained eggs from the Brinsea to the lock down incubator and plugged it in. I also padded the incubator in it's styrofoam packing so that it wouldn't lose heat as fast.

Sadly, I lost one of my day 7 eggs in the process of moving them. I grabbed the Brinsea egg tray around the center and heard a crack. I squeezed too hard and broke the egg and egg whites were leaking out. Even though the embryo was still alive, I tossed it. With a cracked membrane that was leaking whites, it didn't have much of a chance to make it the rest of the way through incubation.

Well, that worked great.... Until the battery ran out of power. So I decided to get Thermacare heat wraps to drape over the eggs until the power came back on. That worked well. I had an extra thermometer and I stuck the probe down next to the eggs and it was holding steady around 94 F.

During this time, I was also monitoring the chicks that hatched last week as well. All the chicks looked fine, except Tiny, the only full Bantam Cochin. Tiny was getting cold. So I broke out another heating pad and let Tiny sleep in my cleavage until the heating pad warmed up.

At 6pm, the power came back on and I set everything back up as normal. I checked on the eggs that were hatching. The two pipped eggs were moving and peeping, and I candled the unpipped egg, and it was internally pipped.

I checked again about 5 minutes ago, and I found this! One hatched chick and two pipped eggs! It looks like I'm going to have 3 more Cornish chicks! I have the thee eggs in that container so A) I don't have to clean the whole incubator after hatching 3 eggs and B) I read something @Pyxis wrote about too much room in the incubator potentially causing splayed legs. This is a 56 egg incubator. So definitely WAY too much room for 3 chicks.

 

[Redhead Rae]

I'm seriously considering getting a generator.

 

[Pyxis]

I read something @Pyxis wrote about too much room in the incubator potentially causing splayed legs

Sorry about your power outage and the broken egg

Do you know where you read that? I don't remember writing it, and I don't think too much room would cause splayed legs. Might be something I wrote a long time ago and need to correct

 

[Redhead Rae]

I could have gotten confused. I don't know. I think I read it somewhere shortly after looking at your response to this thread. I had a chick that I needed to make a tape shoe for an that suggestion may have come up in my searches right around that time.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/how-do-i-know-what-chicks-hatched-from-what-eggs.1229655/

 

[Pyxis]

No worries Too much room shouldn't cause splayed leg, but a slippery bottom surface in the incubator might. I like to put down shelf liner to make sure they have a good grip after they hatch. Plus it makes cleanup really easy.

 

[Redhead Rae]

No worries Too much room shouldn't cause splayed leg, but a slippery bottom surface in the incubator might. I like to put down shelf liner to make sure they have a good grip after they hatch. Plus it makes cleanup really easy.

My lock down incubator has a plastic mesh grid above a bottom that has channels for water. I don't like the channels because they get scummy and they are hard to fill cleanly, so I use sponges instead. Those channels also make cleanup hard. I'm keeping my eye open for a Scratch and Dent Brinsea in a larger size and then I'll use my 28 as my lockdown incubator. I don't see myself hatching more than 28 eggs at a time for a while. Plus I think I could fit more eggs in the Brinsea for hatching than for starting because I can remove the turning cradles.

 

[Redhead Rae]

Last night after dark, I put 9 Cornish eggs (plus 3 mixed flock eggs) under the broody. She took to them just fine.

When I went to bed last night, two chicks had hatched. This morning 3 out of 3 eggs were hatched! Thank goodness the power outage and the overlong cool down last week didn't kill them!