the whole stop turnign 3 days b4 they hatch is fake

[Oven Ready]

my last post on this as its a pointless task

No it's not a pointless task.
You've already convinced me that a 97% hatch rate is about as good as you could expect and I know that our hens don't manage that kind of percentage. You can't sway everybody but that's not the point - if someone else reads this post in six months time they may look at the information you have provided and take that on board, or they may decide turning for the full term is the way to go - the point is you balanced the OPs original claim - Nothing pointless in that.

The information you've provide is helpful, as is the evidence from others that, in their case, turning did not result in a totally failed hatch.​

 

[crossedwires]

Quote:
No it's not a pointless task.
You've already convinced me that a 97% hatch rate is about as good as you could expect and I know that our hens don't manage that kind of percentage. You can't sway everybody but that's not the point - if someone else reads this post in six months time they may look at the information you have provided and take that on board, or they may decide turning for the full term is the way to go - the point is you balanced the OPs original claim - Nothing pointless in that.

The information you've provide is helpful, as is the evidence from others that, in their case, turning did not result in a totally failed hatch.

97% is a good rate, but yes we do get a good few of 100% but we track our hatch rate very very closely, each and every egg has its own serial number so we know wich pen its from and every detail pertaing to that egg such as each time its candled etc is logged, we also know wich roo is responsiable for fertilising each egg. the 97% figure i gave is last years hatch rate taken overall from a total of 72,365 chickens (it dosnt include hatches from the other birds), but we do monitor rates for each and every hatch

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'm not advocating continuing to turn. I see no benefit whatsoever in continuing to turn. You can do harm whether you turn by hand or by automatic turner during lockdown and the hatch. I mentioned some possibilities for harm in my other post and there could be others. I'm still not convinced that very slow turning in an automatic turner does harm to the pipping and zipping process itself, but I do not see that turning during lockdown and hatch helps any part of the process in any way and can cause harm. I take my turner out when I lock down.

Crosswires, I understand you are getting frustrated, but why does gentle turning itself harm the pip and zip? I'm just trying to understand the process. Or do you have practical experience that the turning itself hurts the pip and zip and not some other variable? If you can tell me that turning is the only variable and you consistently get worse results for the pip and zip, I can accept that. To me, possible mechanical damage to the chick after the pip and zip is another issue and clearly a reason to stop turning.

When you put them in lockdown, do you lay them flat or are they held so the air sac is always up and the other hatching chicks can't play football with them? Or maybe a better way to phrase it. How do you position the eggs in the hatcher when you lock down?

 

[rodriguezpoultry]

Many of us are using still-air styrafoam incubators. The motor for the turner is located inside of the incubator itself and yes, does generate heat within the incubator. There are warm and cool spots within the incubator. The giant incubators used by industry are designed to maintain a steady heat throughout and are reinforced with insulation in several areas. A styrfoam incubator versus an industry incubator doesn't stand a chance.


ONE chick hatched when I removed the turner and turned up the heat because of the lack of heat from the motor. No chicks hatched when I turned off the turner. 4 chicks hatched when I left the turner in the incubator and left it running. I'm going with what works best in this incubator.

 

[crossedwires]

it may come as a surprise to some but despite the loss of eggs per foot square of area in the incubator, we ALWAYS incubate and HATCH with the eggs laying down. space wise this is less efficiant but hatch wise gives us consistantly better hatches, off the top of my head i cant remeber the optimum angel for eggs but eggs evolved the way they did for a reason wich is one reason why they are the shape they are. yes eggs become that shape because a hen lays large end first but the overall reason why its that way is for maximum efficiency. the reasons why eggs are better hatched and incubated that way are realy complex and involve gaseous exchange levels and not having any cappiliary nets over the area where in the last 11 hours before piping a sudden increase in oxygen is needed, now at this point i would say i have got great hatches end up incubating and its a methos i would say use if you want to maximise space. however we hatch for optimum rate and vitality and in this respect we have yet to find a better way than the side method, so we choose to have less eggs per foot sqr (so this is purely a personal choice thing).
the only scientific facts i can give you regarding turning dureing lock down are based on a study a Dr murray did about 7 years ago at oxford university (my old uni). the chemical and hormonal levels are different if eggs are turned dureing the last 41 hours, for a start there is a 12% increase in the stress hormone testosterone. and there is an increase in chemicals that can lead to appitite supression. without digging out the paper (i have it somewhere) i cant give you the differences off the top of my head i just given you the one i remember most.
from personal experiance and detailed record keeping system we have i can only tell you that complete lock down gives us the better results and this is based on large data samples of tens of thousands of egg records we keep. infact as a side note we have every record of every egg we have hatched since we got the new record system installed 15 years ago! so our overall data sample is of many millions of eggs both chciken, duck etc etc etc, bearing in mind in good years we have hatched 300,000 pheasent eggs in a year. so from that point of view my opinion of not turning is from many many hatches based on millions of detailed hatch records and properly statistacly analysed.
i am deff not having a go at anyone and i totaly agree that for the more experianced continueing to turn in lockdown if they realy want to is an option. where i get frustrated is where newbies are led to believe that its a good idea. with experiance you develop the "ART" of hatching and with this you can bend all kinds of rules and routinely get away with it. but when your still at the "hand painting" stage its best to try and follow best practice.
as i said what miffed me was the thread title not the content

 

[crossedwires]

Quote:
the largest incubator we use hold 700 eggs, we purposely dont have batches bigger than that in a single incubator. all our incubators are made here includeing the design and manufacture of the electronic control systems (actualy thats the devision i am most involved in), we do this because we continiously seek and reasearch better hatch's, currently our R&D budget runs at around £250,000 per annum. i fully intend to do a detailed thread on improving the small homemade incubators from little or no budget upto systems you can build costing $100+ so anyone interested stay tuned lol

 

[crazy chook]

Quote:
That makes perfect sense. I posted a little while ago about whether or not to leave eggs in the carton or lay them down for lockdown. I was questioning if they had greater chance of drowning in their shells being upright? Also if it was easier for them to get out being upright, and, of coarse, not being able to kick around the remaining eggs the incubator as they do. OR should I lay them down as they would be if under a hen?

Thank you for your comments - I did read this thread earlier on because of the title and thought it should be deleted!! (the title) It is very misleading to me being relatively new incubating eggs. I was then directed back to this thread when talking about lockdown positions. This is my 5th time incubating and I am getting better hatches each time due to experience with my own incubator and the wonderful information on BYC. Out of 17 eggs developing 13 hatched. 3 seemed to make it to day 18 or so and the other to day 15ish.

thanks again, Donna