Yes, first hatches can be really stressful especially if they don’t go exactly by the book. Problem is, they usually don’t. Each hatch is unique and can go their own way.
The first day doesn’t count. An egg does not have 24 hours’ worth of development 2 seconds or 2 hours after it goes in the incubator. It takes 24 hours for it to have a day’s worth of development so you are really at Day 22. That’s a real common mistake. An easy way to check your counting is the day of the week they go in the incubator is the day of the week they should hatch. If they go in on a Friday, they should hatch on a Friday.
The 2 day thing is just a target, not something set in stone. A whole lot of different things can affect when an egg actually hatches; heredity, humidity, how and how long an egg was stored before it went into the incubator, and just basic differences in individual eggs. A real big factor is average incubator temperature. If the incubator is a bit warm, they will likely be a bit early, maybe as much as 3 days for pip to start. If it is cool they can be really late. I’ve had eggs hatch two full days early under a broody hen and in my incubator. I’ve also had them hatch right on time. That kind of inconsistency can be really frustrating even after you’ve had a few hatches.
Don’t worry about going into lockdown a full day early if you did. That 18 day thing is another target, not an absolute requirement. Lots of people that miscount the days and go into lockdown early still have great hatches.
A lot is going on inside that egg during hatch. The chick has to absorb the yolk, dry up those blood vessels you were worried about, learn to breathe air instead of living in a liquid world, do something with that gunk they have been living in so their down dries nice and fluffy instead of all pasted down, and who knows what else. Some chicks do a lot of this before external pip. These pop out of the shell pretty quickly after external pip, maybe just a very few hours. I’ve had some I never even saw the pip though it may have been hiding down at the bottom. Some chicks do a lot of those preparatory works after external pip. These can take forever, more than 24 hours. These are the ones that cause us all the concern.
With all this uncertainty the hardest thing about all this is knowing when to help if you even need to. If you try too early before it is ready you are likely to kill the chick. If you wait too long, it can die. A lot of chicks aren’t meant to make it anyway, no matter what you do. They have some deformity, maybe internal, that means they can’t live. About half the chicks I’ve helped have died within a couple of days of hatch.
So what should you do? First of all, try patience. You are more likely to cause harm than help at this stage. Go to the Learning Center at the top of this page and study about helping chicks hatch. Different people go by different things as to when to help and have different techniques in helping. At the end of the day you have to make your own decision but reading several different articles on what to look for and how to help can better prepare you.
I wish there was a simple answer to this, but there is not. Good luck!
