The 4th Annual BYC Easter Hatch-a-long

[Wax Myrtle]

I read a post from someone that does staggered hatching in a cabinet incubator. Wait until you see a pip and then raise the humidity. After the hatch, let the humidity go back down. The increase in humidity for the hatch does not hurt the incubating eggs.

Let us know how it works for you!

Thanks! I'll try to keep a "diary"

 

[Gardeningmama]

If you set eggs on the 9th, Tomorrow is Lockdown!

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Since I cheated and set a day early, I'll be locking down today. My kids think I was a nice mommy buying them a big carton of strawberries at the store yesterday. They don't know I wanted the container to hatch in.

Now I gotta empty it out.

That's funny! My kids love me because I buy boxes of mini eclairs and cream puffs.The container they come in is plastic, and just the right height and width to set my waterers on in the brooders. Win, Win!

 

[Happy Chooks]

I have some eggs I want to hatch separately, so the strawberry container is for them - then I can band the chicks.

 

[animalsroc4evr]

Congradualtions

Thank you

 

[Sally Sunshine]

OK couple questions please! Sunday night was Day 14 so we did some candling. I took some pics but they're kind of hard to see. I knew from day 0 and day 7, 1 egg had a detached air cell and on day 7 another egg looked to have a blood ring, but being an inexperienced candler I left them both knowing they may still reattach if it wasn't a blood ring. Day 14 (this past Sunday) the 2 still have air cells moving around in them as I rotate the egg, and a 3rd egg seems awful light through it. The other 5 have beautiful air cells and the remainder of the egg is dark and filling up quickly. Should I go ahead and remove the 3 others? Also, on the one that I thought had a blood ring at first (and still may) that also has a detached air cell, it was kind of oblong and odd shaped. This one was sent as a hopeful extra I'm sure since I got more than I "won". On the sides of it, it is getting this little hard deposits that were not there before. it looks like a tiny bead of something about the size of a pin head and it's kind of brown. These were not there before it was perfectly smooth aside from the odd ridges. It started with just 1 now there's 2-3. What is this?

sounds like its seeping? I think I am reading outside of the egg?

look....https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/hatching-eggs-101

TINY Sappy spots possibly due to Rough Shipment of EGGS
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[Sally Sunshine]

This was the road to the chickens on Sunday. It's normally a relatively busy road (a shortcut from the main road into the city), but as you can see, not many people were able to use it.

beautiful!!

 

[Sally Sunshine]

Yesterday it was windy and snowing. Nothing was sticking so I thought I would be safe....I woke to this

So now I am with the rest of you....

also lovely! I need a pond! or lake!!

 

[DragonOxeWeasel]

Hatch Day - 4


Here's something hatch-related.

Why are eggs the shape they are?


First of all, what is the shape of a chicken egg? It's not round or spherical, like some reptile eggs. It's not oval either. It's an asymmetrical mix of oval and tapered, with one end bigger than the other — yup, chicken eggs are an 'asymmetric tapered oval'.

The ovoid shape gives an egg its incredible strength. You can see this amazing power first-hand with a simple experiment.
First, remove any rings on your fingers and slip on a rubber glove. Then wrap your fingers around an egg and squeeze really, really hard while trying to apply equal pressure to all sides of the egg. If this demonstration is done correctly, even Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn't crack it. Why? Because of something the egg has in common with famous works of architecture like the Pantheon in Rome, Italy. This monument has survived for nearly 2,000 years because it's shaped like a three-dimensional arch, a domed, egg-like shape that's one of the strongest architectural designs in the world. When an object is placed on top of it, no single point in the dome supports the entire weight; instead, the object's heaviness is carried down along the curved walls to the dome's wide base. This, of course, works best when you apply similar pressure to all sides of the dome. If your egg breaks, it's most likely because one of your fingers applied greater pressure to the shell than the others. 


If eggs were rectangular little boxes, they would be very strong on the corners, but very weak in the middle of the straight walls. (They would also be extremely uncomfortable for the chicken to lay.) Sharp edges can act as stress concentrators. It is at these points that structures are most likely to fail. It’s why you can usually rip a piece of paper in half fairly cleanly. Once you have a small tear in it, the stress will be concentrated at the tip of the tear, and the tear will propagate forward. It’s the same reason why a small crack in your car windscreen can easily turn into a larger crack - the stress is concentrated at the ends of the cracks.
Round things such as eggs obviously don’t have sharp points to them and therefore it is much harder to get a crack formed in the first place. Also, the shape ensures the shell is strong in compression (squashing) but weaker in tension (stretching). External forces are likely to squash it, whereas internal forces (the chick trying to get out) will stretch it, and it breaks more easily.The strongest shape of all is a ball, or sphere. But if you were to push or gently nudge a spherical egg, it would roll away downhill, never to be seen again.

So, one reason that eggs have an asymmetric tapered oval shape is that if you nudge them, they'll come back to you. They'll sweep out a circle around the pointed end, and come to a stop with the pointed end facing uphill. In fact, the eggs of birds that have their nests on cliffs are more oval than the eggs of birds that nest on the ground. This means the 'more-oval' eggs of these cliff-nesting birds will roll in a very tight little circle, and be less likely to roll out of the nest — and off the cliff.

Another reason for eggs to be egg-shaped is that they fit together quite snugly in the nest, with only small air spaces between them. This means the eggs radiate their heat onto each other, and keep each other warm. And of course, you can fit more eggs into the nest.

Yet another reason that eggs are tapered is so that they can get pushed out of the hen. It sounds intuitively wrong and extremely uncomfortable, but eggs are laid with the blunt end coming out first, followed by the tapered end. In fact, the physics of pushing-an-egg-out tells us that eggs have to come out blunt end first.
It can be explained with an example. If you've eaten cherries, you'll have come across the pip or stone inside the cherry. That pip is tapered on each end. Think how easy it is to squeeze a tapered cherry pip between your fingers, and squirt it a metre or two. At the other extreme of things, think how hard it would be to squirt rectangular dice anywhere, if you just squeeze them between your fingers. It would be impossible.
Getting back to the chicken egg, the end of the chicken egg that tapers to a point has the ideal shape for the muscles of the hen's vagina to push on - and out. The hen's vagina has the basic shape of a tube. As the muscles squeeze upon the egg, they find more surface area to act on at the tapered end - as compared to the blunt end. And so the tapered end retreats from the contracting muscles, pushing the egg (blunt end first) into the outside world.

Very interesting! Thank you for sharing!

 

[Sally Sunshine]

If you set eggs on the 9th, Tomorrow is Lockdown!

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Since I cheated and set a day early, I'll be locking down today. My kids think I was a nice mommy buying them a big carton of strawberries at the store yesterday. They don't know I wanted the container to hatch in.

Now I gotta empty it out.

cheater cheater pumpkin eater






TAD-- how is she now?

 

[CowgirlHC]

sounds like its seeping? I think I am reading outside of the egg?

look....https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/hatching-eggs-101

TINY Sappy spots possibly due to Rough Shipment of EGGS
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That sort of looks like what I have going on, although instead of the milky appearance they're more sappy brown. I believe it's a dud anyways, but THANK YOU for sharing that link! So much information! I think 5/8 shipped eggs developing well is pretty good personally! Should I go ahead and remove those 3?