Hens go broody when you don’t want them to… and won’t go broody when you do. 
knowvagale
Songster
A hilariously unlikely to succeed hatching project. A homemade incubator with no real thermometer. Four questionably sourced eggs, and no prior hatching experience whatsoever. What could possibly go wrong? First, a little background: my family has a friend who does housekeeping for us every week, and ever since she discovered we were willing to pay high prices for her delicious farm-fresh eggs, she has brought over baskets frequently. Once when I was about ten years old, I decided it would be a good idea to try to hatch one. I stuck it in a bean strainer suspended over pot of lukewarm water, intending to reheat it when it cooled. Unsurprisingly, the endeavor was a total failure. And to be honest, years later, when I pulled a hacked-up ice chest out of the back of a storage closet and bargained with my mother until she finally agreed to give up four of her precious eggs, my egg-spectations (sorry, sorry, I had to) were not high. First of all, I had no reliable thermometer. Instead I poked a plethora of medical and meat thermometers through the foam, all of which seemed to have a different opinion on on the actual temperature. I had a heat lamp that had been retired from use in a reptile cage, but no way to secure it in the incubator, so I used a heating pad instead. The second problem was this: the heating pad got too hot if the eggs were placed directly on top of it, but when I placed them on a baking rack one or two inches above it, they only reached around 90-95 degrees. I wrapped the ice chest in tinfoil, but it didn't quite do the trick. In order to get it to the required 98-102, I had to repeatedly heat up a sock filled with lentils in the microwave every 4 or 5 hours, or every time I turned the eggs. I was ridiculously pessimistic about the possibility of one of them actually developing, let alone hatching. I promised myself I'd throw the eggs out at day seven if there was no sign of development, before they became too rancid. But I am nothing but not impulsive, and I couldn't wait until day 7 to candle. Today, day four, I took the eggs out to candle them, and to my surprise, there was not one but four embryos developing! Still, I doubt that they will make it through the whole 3 weeks. The temperature in the incubator is hard to control and dips to 95 every night, so I'm hardly optimistic. But I'll continue to post updates, and you never know--maybe some of them will survive my lack of any experience and actual supplies. Also, here are some pictures of the monstrous frankenstein incubator and the eggs inside.
