First time incubating my own eggs and would like to try my best to share the experience with my over the road husband. Originally thought to set them 21 days before he is due home but in reading others experiences it might be all over by then. What day should I set them to have him be most likely to witness if he is home Saturday and Sunday? Do chicks ever hatch before day 18 lock down? I know it seems silly but he was so excited when he got to pick up our third batch of day olds from the post office, He misses a lot of the fun stuff.
When they hatch depends on your incubators tempurture and on how steady it is. It is a good idea to calibrate your thermometer before you start so, you know the real temp. You want it to stay as close to 99.5 F as possible. If it runs one degree high at 100.5 the chicks will hatch a day early. If the tempurture is low by one degree they can hatch a day late. I would try to time it so, they start hatching on Friday evening so, set them 20 days before he will be home in the evening. They sometimes will start peeping and you can hear them when they internally pip sometimes12 hours before they hatch. It's kind of fun to hear. Good Luck
Tried to "time" a Christmas Day hatch for the grandkids. Some hatched early and rest mostly early Christmas morning, before they got up here. Oh well. They saw a couple of them. Timing to the very moment of the very day is almost impossible. Close. That's about all you can do.
