the whole stop turnign 3 days b4 they hatch is fake

[Oven Ready]

As I said before I have no knowledge whatsoever of incubator hatching so I've had a quick look on the internet for why you should stop turning the eggs a few days before hatching and couldn't really find anything conclusive, plenty say 'Don't turn the eggs in the last xxx days' but none actually explained why.

It's a fact that my hens keep turning all their eggs right up to hatching, not just turning but moving them around within the clutch and the majority hatch OK.

The few articles I found said that the three days 'rest' period was to allow the chicks to get into position to hatch, but obviously my chicks don't get that luxury so my question is....

Why is it that incubator chicks need to be static for three days and natual born chicks don't?

The only answer I could think of, given all other variables are similar between incubator and natural, is that the incubator chicks don't have a mum to help them out. I've seen ours peck at the membranes and deliberately turn half-hatched eggs over, even day old siblings peck at the hatchling shells and membranes.

I'd be interested to know the real answer from an experienced incubator user.

 

[crossedwires]

one of the reasons is indeed oriantation so the chick can pip in the correct place, it is also a signal for the chick to start piping, yes most would do this anyway. and although a hen does indeed move the eggs a bit, you will find in the last few days a hem will pretty much stay put, this is for extra humidity, now before people start shouting that there hens move aboput and dont stay put. yes indeed some do get up and walk about but only if the humidity of the egg is to high (clever hens),. so what do we deduce from all this? well nothing actualy because as incubators hens arnt the best, a good incubator with an experianced operator will out hatch a hen every time!! look at it this way most hens will hatch say between 8-10 eggs out of twelve and i would consider that good, here we reguarly have hatch rates of around 96-98%! of fertile eggs. now theese figures arnt from a small data pool, last week alone we hatched around 6000 chicks with a hatch rate of 97% if our rates drop below 94% (fertile) then we investigate.
whatever way you look at it not turning for the last 3 days is best. if i was being pedantic i would say lock down 72 hours no movement 48 hours, but is easier and better to just stop turning and lock day 72 hours before hatch. HTH

 

[Oven Ready]

Our natural hatch rates are about 60-70%, including infertiles so that would perhaps be the difference although we don't get many that are developed and fail to pip properly, the usual non-hatchers are infertile/never developed, dead at mid-development and occaisionally shrink wrappers.

We have high temps and very high humidity all year round so perhaps, as you mention, that is one of the reasons why our hens are so 'carefree' about getting on and off and leaving eggs out from underneath them for hours on end.

Maybe if we lived in a colder/drier climate I wouldn't see our hens off so often. Interesting stuff.

 

[crossedwires]

we candle at 3 days and any infertile are noted so we can track the birds fertility, after that point we only exspect to get 3-4 eggs out of 100 that dont hatch, we rarely get any dead mid development etc, there isnt many hens that can match those kind of rates. i should point out we use fully computerised hatching systems that we build here. everything is done to maximise hatch rates. the buildings we house the incubators in are bio secure with strict entry rules regarding footware and clothing. so its a little different from home hatching, i was merely using ours as an example of a system that would consistantly out hatch a hen in terms of rates, yes our backyarders do on occasion have 100% hatches but mostly i would say around 75%-80% for our hens.

 

[rodriguezpoultry]

Sorry, but I have to agree with the keep turning method.

I stopped turning the eggs in the incubator with the automatic turner and the temp dropped (dramatically) from the motor being turned off. This caused massive deaths in eggs that were a day away from pipping.

So, I will continue to use the turner until all chicks have hatched.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think it would help the discussion if people would describe their incubators a bit. Still air, forced air, home made, commercial, automatic turner, hand turning. They are all different. Different people use diferent humidities during incubation. There are a lot of variables.

I personally do not think turning them in the last three days is an important variable. Keeping the egg so the air sac in the big end is not lower than the fluid in the egg to keep from drowning the chick when it internally pips is important. Keeping the humidity up is important.

The way I understand it, the reason you turn the egg is to keep the yolk and embryo from coming into direct contact with the inside of the egg shell. If it comes into contact, the embryo will dry out through the porous egg shell and get stuck. A stuck chick has great trouble pipping and especially zipping. During the last few days, the embryo is so large that turning the egg will not keep it from contacting the side of the egg shell so you increase the humidity so it will not dry out and get stuck. If you are hand turning you cannot keep turning the eggs and keep the incubator closed so the humidity stays up. An automatic turner is not going to affect the humidity so you could leave it on or turn it off. There is a chance with the automatic turner still in the incubator, whether it is turned on or off, that a newly hatched chick could get a leg stuck. Since it does not matter if you turn them or not during lockdown, why leave something in that can harm the chick. Take your automatic turner out. It doesn't matter. There is no benefit to turning in the last few days with the higher humidity and either hand turning or auto turning can possibly harm the hatch or the chicks, so just stop turning. I think the way hatched chicks play soccer with the unhatched eggs shows that turning is irrelevant as long as the small end does not wind up higher than the large end the has the air sac. And there are debates going on in other threads whether it is better to hatch in a carton or lay them flat. Another variable.

If turning off a turner affects the temperature of an incubator, that is a heat issue, not a turning issue. That was a homemade incubator anyway and they can be quite touchy. I remember that thread. My 1588 forced air can handle the temperatures whether the turner is on or off.

Reaching conclusions because something happened once is risky. I got 7 pullets out of an order of 6 straight run chicks. Even the packing peanut was a pullet. Should I conclude that the hatcheries stack the odds toward pullets in straight run orders? There are a lot less variables in a straight run order than in incubation success.

Just my opinion.

 

[crossedwires]

i'm not going to harp on about this everyone is free to choose whatever method they want, as for turning eggs solely because your bator dosnt keep keep temp with the motor off, then you need to look at the heating in the incubator its ludicrous to use the motor as a heat source. last point i will make just as something to think about.

comercial hatcheries relay on the best hatch rates they can get to stay in business, as a hatchery i realy cant stress enough how much every egg counts to us. theese days in particular the margins between profit and loss are riduiculously tight we live constantly on a knife edge between being viable and not viable. therefore we use which ever method proves to be the most effective one at producing the best hatches. believe me it would save a great deal of money if using a incubator instead of a hatcher was the best way, but it isnt so we have to employ hatchers so we can lock down the hatches. as i said before yes you will normaly still get chicks hatch if you continue to turn but your hatch rate will be lower and the incidence of post hatch problems alot higher. it dosnt take much to put noobies off when they get bad hatches wich in the beginning many noobies do and alot of them give up. so advising a bad practice wich is more likely to leed to failiure isnt a good idea or helpful to those starting out. as i said there is a reason comercial hatcheries dont turn after day 18 and thats because its the best way to get the best hatches wich we depend on. that principle stands wether you hatch 6000 eggs a week or 6 eggs a month.

 

[Oven Ready]

I have to lean toward CrossedWires.
If stopping turning for three days is giving them 97% hatch rate then it is probably the right thing to do.
Even if continuing turning does work as well, it's not going to make the process hugely better percentage wise.

Perhaps what we can take from this, and I'm open to be corrected, is that the 'rules' of don't turn/don't touch for three days are only really hard and fast when you are commercial and you need every last chick to be earning it's cent.

If you are home hatching you can be less strict but on the expectation that you may not get such a good percentage regularly.

If you are natural hatching, then it's completely up to the hen and the weather and hatch rates can vary from 0 - 100% and it's nothing to do with you.

If you are new to this (or seasoned), take advice from many sources not just one.

 

[SeaHen]

We built and used our home-made incubator for the first time this spring with 15 duck eggs and 7 chicken eggs. We never stopped turning them because they were partly incubated when we got them and we didn't know when they were due. We had humidity issues at the end and lost 3 of the chicks and 1 of the ducklings. I have an inkling that some of the professional incubating advice is overkill, especially since I've watched my banty hens roll their eggs around even as they're pipping, but this is just my thinking and experience.

 

[crossedwires]

my last post on this as its a pointless task. the only thing that sticks out to me is the people that are advocating keep turning all kinda say the same thing " we only lost a few" or "most of them hatched" that to me says it all, if the keep turning method is the way to go why are your loss's that high? and why the reluctance to stop turning? infact dont answer that time for me to drop this