Quote: Yep. Two days before and 2 days after set date. With bad aircells, you should let them sit for at least 12 to 24 hours so the aircells reattach. @Sally Sunshine has a ton of great links to help.
Yeah, Sally Sunshine's earlier post is what I was using as a guide. They're currently sitting in the coolest room of my house resting, I'm still debating on when exactly to stick them in the incubator. Waiting until Thursday for the HAL would be quite the stretch, but now I have another dilemma!
Someone conveniently pointed me towards someone a bit more local with fertile EE eggs yesterday. They're about a two hour drive from me, just on the edge of far enough that I couldn't decide if it'd be worth the drive for a dozen eggs. She texted me this morning that she'd be willing to deliver them to me since she'll be passing through here on Thursday, but only if I buy at least 3 dozen eggs at $15 a dozen. The price doesn't phase me at all and that's super nice of her... but what am I going to do with 5 dozen eggs! Granted, like I said, those first 2 dozen are in rough shape. I'll be so upset to set those 2 dozen and only get a couple from it. But really... I only wanted maybe 10 EE tops from the whole ordeal XD I suppose I could always buy another 3 dozen, hatch what I can and sell the extras.
But my turner in my main incubator won't fit them all, it only holds 41 eggs. I have another incubator, a fridge style one, also made for reptiles. It is a moving air incubator and temp/humidity is a little easier to manage in it, but I'd have to turn any eggs in it by hand. What I'm thinking is, I can go ahead and set these two dozen eggs I already have this evening in my fridge incubator. That'll give them a full 24 hours of resting, and I can leave them in egg cartons in the fridge so they stay upright. I likely won't turn them at all for the first 2-3 days given Sally Sunshine's recommendations and then when I do, I'll manually tilt the egg cartons ever so slightly. Maybe the manual turning will be better on them anyway given the rough air cells. Then, I could get those other 3 dozen delivered Thursday, and I'll still be able to participate in the HAL with those eggs! Now I just gotta ask the boyfriend. Granted, the answer is usually yes, but I think he likes to at least believe he has some control over my chicken antics.
Sounds like you got a plan! Most of the chicks I'm hatching are spoken for, so I can set as many as I can fit in the bator.... and if all else fails I can clean my old one and try to hatch in it. I still need to fix it.
Can I join in?
