The Old Folks Home

[casportpony]

After hatching more than 4000 chicks with incubation ramped up to 500 eggs in the bator and more each week here is my take on the whole incubator thing.

Lots of really good people here in byc have written great learning center articles and others offer great advice. Many however just regugitate misinformation that has no evidence to back it up. Stick to the advice of smart people like those who offer citations like Kathy or @Sally Sunshine or have proven methodology and wear a byc educator badge like Ron.

If you are going to incubate, have all the tools you need when you start. This includes accurate thermometers and hygrometers. Chickens should pip on day 20 and be done by day 21. Sure you will read that it can take 23 days but generally its because you have done something wrong - most probably your bator temps are too low. Its easy to blow 60-100 bucks on eggs but people balk at a 30 buck thermometer and 15 dollar flashlight that will help you so much they could pay you back in one or two hatches. A usb temp data logger is a great toy if you are having temp issues. A gram scale is great for your first hald dozen hatches.

Do proof of concept hatches first. Shipped eggs have a myriad of problems. Before attempting the tough eggs, do five or six hatches of local eggs. If you are worried about what to do with the chicks - just give them away. I can just about guaranteee you will find homes for free chicks on craigslist. My practice eggs were 10 bucks a doz. I then moved onto TJ eggs. Once I knew my bators were tuned and technique was good, I started with shipped eggs. Some hatches were great, some aweful but atleast I was not second guessing myself.

Lockdown at 18 days is almost an urban chicken myth. Yes, stop turning them on day 18 but your eggs need to lose 11-13% of weight to hatch succesfully. Two of the easiest things to prevent increased dead in shell late losses are correct amount of fluid loss from the egg and adequate turning from the start of incubation. You need to up humidity before the first pip occurs. if you can heat chiping from inside the egg, its about time. If your eggs are at 11% on day 18 then put the brakes on the evaporation process by increasing humidity then If not, wait.

Opening an incubator during hatching is not like when a plane window gets blown out and the flight attendants get sucked out. The membrane wont suddenly suck down, shrink wrapping the chick. Shrink wrapping is called such because the end product is similar to look at. it takes sustained low humidity or long pip to zip times to shrink wrap. opening the bator is a must for me as I dont have enough room for all the chicks in the hatcher ( I will build another soon) so we pluck chicks every 6 hours that are dry. The room is at a min of 65% humidity but normally 75%+. The bator is opened chicks are pulled and bator is closed.

Shipped eggs from sea level will hatch at a lower rate at 2000 feet than eggs laid at 2000 feet hatched at sea level. Know your eggs.

Wash your hands before you handle incubating eggs. Incubators also do a great job of propagating bacteria.

My methods work in my environment. I train people to incubate by instructions. They dont know the science and therefore they dont overthink. Over handling eggs and overthinking the hatch will cause more problems than not.

Practice, perfect then be a machine.

Truly one of the best posts I have ever read on BYC! So many good points, like spending the extra money to have a decent candler, hygrometer, gram scale, etc Proof of concept hatches, bacteria, humidity, etc, etc, etc. Great post, thanks!

-Kathy

 

[ronott1]

After hatching more than 4000 chicks with incubation ramped up to 500 eggs in the bator and more each week here is my take on the whole incubator thing.

Lots of really good people here in byc have written great learning center articles and others offer great advice. Many however just regugitate misinformation that has no evidence to back it up. Stick to the advice of smart people like those who offer citations like Kathy or @Sally Sunshine or have proven methodology and wear a byc educator badge like Ron.

If you are going to incubate, have all the tools you need when you start. This includes accurate thermometers and hygrometers. Chickens should pip on day 20 and be done by day 21. Sure you will read that it can take 23 days but generally its because you have done something wrong - most probably your bator temps are too low. Its easy to blow 60-100 bucks on eggs but people balk at a 30 buck thermometer and 15 dollar flashlight that will help you so much they could pay you back in one or two hatches. A usb temp data logger is a great toy if you are having temp issues. A gram scale is great for your first hald dozen hatches.

Do proof of concept hatches first. Shipped eggs have a myriad of problems. Before attempting the tough eggs, do five or six hatches of local eggs. If you are worried about what to do with the chicks - just give them away. I can just about guaranteee you will find homes for free chicks on craigslist. My practice eggs were 10 bucks a doz. I then moved onto TJ eggs. Once I knew my bators were tuned and technique was good, I started with shipped eggs. Some hatches were great, some aweful but atleast I was not second guessing myself.

Lockdown at 18 days is almost an urban chicken myth. Yes, stop turning them on day 18 but your eggs need to lose 11-13% of weight to hatch succesfully. Two of the easiest things to prevent increased dead in shell late losses are correct amount of fluid loss from the egg and adequate turning from the start of incubation. You need to up humidity before the first pip occurs. if you can heat chiping from inside the egg, its about time. If your eggs are at 11% on day 18 then put the brakes on the evaporation process by increasing humidity then If not, wait.

Opening an incubator during hatching is not like when a plane window gets blown out and the flight attendants get sucked out. The membrane wont suddenly suck down, shrink wrapping the chick. Shrink wrapping is called such because the end product is similar to look at. it takes sustained low humidity or long pip to zip times to shrink wrap. opening the bator is a must for me as I dont have enough room for all the chicks in the hatcher ( I will build another soon) so we pluck chicks every 6 hours that are dry. The room is at a min of 65% humidity but normally 75%+. The bator is opened chicks are pulled and bator is closed.

Shipped eggs from sea level will hatch at a lower rate at 2000 feet than eggs laid at 2000 feet hatched at sea level. Know your eggs.

Wash your hands before you handle incubating eggs. Incubators also do a great job of propagating bacteria.

My methods work in my environment. I train people to incubate by instructions. They dont know the science and therefore they dont overthink. Over handling eggs and overthinking the hatch will cause more problems than not.

Practice, perfect then be a machine.

Wonderful post!

 

[vehve]

Good post, Oz. Hygrometers are nice for giving you an idea of what the humidity is, but the scale really is the best tool. And I'd like to add to Oz's post, that when you weigh the eggs, don't do it individually. Pick out about five or ten eggs and weigh them together, then just be sure to weigh those same eggs every time. That way you get a lot higher accuracy. If you weigh the eggs individually on a gram scale, you'll get a one gram accuracy (+- whatever error the scale gives, but that really isn't an issue in this case), but when weighing 10 eggs at once, you'll get a 0.1 gram accuracy per egg, much easier to calculate with that.

Also, for small scale hatching for just adding to your flock, I must say a broody beats an incubator easily in my opinion.

 

[Double Kindness]

I helped it a bit, but now I'm thinking I should leave it alone. I took a hot bath instead (since I ran a tub full of steaming hot water to help the chick).

I have a fancy flashlight and a hydrometer. I however, have no idea what I am doing or how to do it, obviously.

I'm a bit down on myself atm, thinking this chick is going to maybe have problems. I thought by waiting extra day or 2 before moving them from the janoel to the hatching incubator I could increase my hatch rate. So far 2.75 chicks.

I might break out the limincello, b/c this rose tulsi tea is not doing the trick on soothing me.

 

[ronott1]

I helped it a bit, but now I'm thinking I should leave it alone. I took a hot bath instead (since I ran a tub full of steaming hot water to help the chick).

I have a fancy flashlight and a hydrometer. I however, have no idea what I am doing or how to do it, obviously.

I'm a bit down on myself atm, thinking this chick is going to maybe have problems. I thought by waiting extra day or 2 before moving them from the janoel to the hatching incubator I could increase my hatch rate. So far 2.75 chicks.

I might break out the limincello, b/c this rose tulsi tea is not doing the trick on soothing me.

You are doing fine!

You had some hatch which is very good for a first hatch. It does take practice and figuring out what is best for your place.

 

[ozexpat]

I helped it a bit, but now I'm thinking I should leave it alone. I took a hot bath instead (since I ran a tub full of steaming hot water to help the chick).

I have a fancy flashlight and a hydrometer. I however, have no idea what I am doing or how to do it, obviously.

I'm a bit down on myself atm, thinking this chick is going to maybe have problems. I thought by waiting extra day or 2 before moving them from the janoel to the hatching incubator I could increase my hatch rate. So far 2.75 chicks.

I might break out the limincello, b/c this rose tulsi tea is not doing the trick on soothing me.

You are dealing with shipped eggs so its a crap shoot anyway.

I am cheering you on DK. I had 50 bresse eggs in my last imported hatch. I am jumping for joy that I got 9 chicks. Its a tough journey across the ocean.

There are some good lessons in every poor hatch..Try TJ eggs some other white local eggs or even duck eggs to practice candling. All light up really well.

I dont know Janoel incubators, A cheap way of checking the calibration of the bator's thermostat is to put a cup of water in it, let it fun for a couple of hours then take the temp of the water with a digital medical thermometer.

To check for even heat in the bators i build, I use a water wiggler and a calibrated probe thermometer - a brinsea spot check. The thermostats I uses in my bators are calibrated by immersing the probe in water that has been allowed to partially freeze (not room temp water with ice), then again against a medical thermometer at 100F

The bator I use is an ugly plywood number with wooden shelves that are positioned controlled with a six inch nail. Very basic. It does however have 6 fans controlling the airflow and is about as even temp'ed as you will find.

 

[ozexpat]

Good post, Oz. Hygrometers are nice for giving you an idea of what the humidity is, but the scale really is the best tool. And I'd like to add to Oz's post, that when you weigh the eggs, don't do it individually. Pick out about five or ten eggs and weigh them together, then just be sure to weigh those same eggs every time. That way you get a lot higher accuracy. If you weigh the eggs individually on a gram scale, you'll get a one gram accuracy (+- whatever error the scale gives, but that really isn't an issue in this case), but when weighing 10 eggs at once, you'll get a 0.1 gram accuracy per egg, much easier to calculate with that.

Also, for small scale hatching for just adding to your flock, I must say a broody beats an incubator easily in my opinion.

.

As you pull clears and blood rings, you also lose some of your ten egg sample - then you are toast.

0.1 gram accurracy over 10 eggs is not important in my humble oppinion. a 50 gram egg needs to lose 5.5 grams before upping humidity 10 eggs averaging 500 grams need to lose 55 grams Any more complexity is making extra work and extra worry.

 

[Puddin Fluff]

Yes save money!

Do you have a brewery near you? Even one of those hipster micro breweries? You can mix in spent grain from them at about 50% with chicken feed. Many places will give the grain to you fro free. I need to find one for myself.

Chickens do not digest dairy too well but a bit of cottage cheese should be fine for them.

I wonder, I live close to a winery. Would grape skins/seeds be good for chickens? Never considered that.

 

[ronott1]

I wonder, I live close to a winery. Would grape skins/seeds be good for chickens? Never considered that.

They would be fine for chickens but likely not good if it were too much of their diet. Look into it but my guess is that 10% of their diet could be from grape seeds and skins. The seeks would be better but the skins would give them some good fiber.

 

[Beer can]

I have a couple brewerys near me, Cooperstown Brewery (beer with balls) And Ommegang Belgian style ale. I always figured their spent grain was already taken, I read in a newspaper once that one of them put in a silo for their spent grain for animal feed. But I guess it wouldnt hurt to ask, I'll have to give them a call.