The 5th Annual BYC Easter Hatch-a-long!

[mlm Mike]

The incubator is here!!!

Great!

 

[NaJoBeLe]

LBKS thank you for the candling link and information. I did see rons post and plan to do that to try and bring it up a little bit. Thank you again and everyone enjoy setting your eggs.

 

[jinks12333]

I told my girls they have an hour and a half to lay me two more eggs.... if all goes well Ill be setting a dozen at noon.... alongside of my 18 that are hatching next weekend.... the 7 I saved from the feed store and the other 6 I have ordered for the day after Easter.... Holy goodness what have I gotten myself into. I love my girls... and i think im becoming a true chicken addict!!! hahaha

 

[elliechooks]

I think you have the same incubator as I do, and I've never set my eggs like you have in your pics.  How do you get them to set upright like that, no restraint bar at all.  Just sheer cramming?  I'm interested to know, because I have way more eggs than I thought I would.

its a brinsea octagon 20. See the first 2 rows on the left, if you continue like that you can get 6 rows of 4 good sized chicken eggs and they hold themselves up aa they are so closely packed. Mine gets a bit messed up because I have some smaller cream legbar eggs in, so I have 30 in mine... juat pack 'em in and they stay up. Is a bit tricky if you take one out though, they all collapse!

 

[Hayduke27]

Ok, so incubator has been on for 24 hours now, the temperature fluctuates between 99.3 and 99.7. I used 3 thermometers to calibrate (the Little Giant one that came with the incubator reads about 3 degrees too high, both of my other thermometers are higher quality and are consistent with each other, so I'm going by them). Yesterday I got the awesome advice about adding the mini-tupperwares with holes in the top to add humidity, and exactly as I was told, each cup brought the humidity up about 5%. It's been holding at between 34% and 36%.

The eggs are from my chickens, and are all from within the past 7 days. I have turned them 3x/day. I am using only the most normal shaped and colored ones, not especially large or misshapen ones.

My friend comes over for breakfast, then the eggs are going in! I think I have set things up pretty well for my first attempt at a hatch!

We'll be posting an incubator picture once we are all set!

 

[mccormicks chicks]

Here is a portion of our Easter Eggs set just now... 3 Maran, 15 Ameracauna, 2 Polish, 21 Brahma, 4 Welsummer and 15 Wyandotte. As the God Lord would have it some of our chickens like the Maran and Polish have decided to contribute to this. Can not wait to candle already!

 

[Happy Chooks]

The incubator is here!!!

 

[quailtrail]

Set 18 eggs!!!!!!

 

[jbher]

I plugged my incubator in at 8:15am after I washed it, added some water and am now waiting for it to settle for a couple hours. I have the eggs all lined up in cartons next to it. I decided to go with putting it on top of my dresser. I tested out opening and closing drawers and I think because it's such a BIG and heavy solid wood dresser with good glides it didn't giggle at all. But just in case I told DH that he will have to live out of a nightstand drawer for the next 3 weeks. LOL!!! j/k... well... sort of.

QUESTION - for those that WEIGH your eggs... I weighed mine when they arrived (all of mine are shipped) and I candled and marked air cells at that point too. Should I re-weigh mine this morning to note any changes or do you think it's okay to just set them? I got some on Wed, some Thur and some Fri.

 

[quailtrail]

Oops...

Set 18 eggs!!!!!!

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