two pips, but nothing else. Getting kinda nervous.

[TinkerMedic]

Hi everybody,

This is my first hatch and I have 3 silkie bantams due today. Two eggs have pips, and I saw movement and heard chirping.

I even see what looks like a black feather sticking out a little and moving. It's been 5 hours now and no more progress and alot less noise and movement then before.

When should I worry?

 

[JerseyGiantfolk]

Did the pips happen today? It takes a HUGE effort for the chicks to pip and break the shell. They'll need to take several hours to sleep then fully hatch, my baby pipped at 11am and the next morning hatched at 5am... so don't be worrying quite yet!

 

[TinkerMedic]

Thank you.

That makes me feel a lot better about it. The pips happened at 5pm today and it's 11pm now. I did wonder if maybe they were napping. I just hate to think of them in there struggling while I'm 12 inches away with my face pressed against the glass.

My hen, Henry, is sitting on four eggs right now. (One of the perils of naming a chick before you figure out the gender.) She got up today to eat and while she was gone I touched her eggs. I noticed three were very warm and one was ice cold.

I wonder if she realizes that she wasn't completely sitting on one and it got cold? When she got back in her nest she stuck all four back under herself. Do hens sense when a egg is bad and reject it?

She laid a total of 15 eggs over a two week period, but she wasn't broody, and she kept leaving them, after she laid them. So I originally took all 15 and set them (staggered the setting as she laid them. ugh! I'll NEVER do that again.) Then over the weekend she went broody, but she had no eggs. I felt bad and stuck the 4 back under her that I had set on the 6th. She seems to take very good care of them. Except for the icey egg I noticed this morning.

I love my silkies, but I really have no clue what I'm doing. Poor chickens. *sigh*

 

[JerseyGiantfolk]

No problem! I started raising my own chicks when I was five, and my mom's a chicken instructor.

If there was a lot of eggs under the broody, she could have left that out accidentally

Something good to remember!: After a rooster has mated with your hen, the eggs will stay fertile for about 2 weeks (room temp.)

Oh and don't feel bad! I tried incubating Old English Game eggs, she stopped being broody, laid he own egg and hatched it, and it's a mutt.... but her mutt baby is broody now!

It sounds like you're having good luck right now with your eggs in the incubator! Be sure to get some sleep!