It’s almost that time again—more eggs are due to hatch in a couple of days. The end result is the biggest benefit of hatching eggs at home but the in between time is sometimes not as easy as some would have you believe.
This will be my third try for this year since receiving my incubator for Christmas. The results from my first attempt was two biddies, a boy and a girl, where I was able to show you how to sex baby chickens. Two out of eight was not very good with a 25% hatch rate. My second attempt had a 100% hatch rate with all six eggs hatching so I can continue raising baby chickens.
At present I have nine eggs in the incubator, starting with 15. The beginning phase of hatching eggs is easy, especially in the type of incubator I have. Mine is a still air incubator (manual rotation) so it has air holes in the top. In the beginning you start with one air hole open and fill only two of the four troughs with water. If you have never incubated eggs before you will find that the temperature and humidity in the environment that the incubator is kept affects the process. Some of you may disagree but these are the standards I use to incubate eggs: humidity level at 40% until day 18 and then bumped up to 60-70% the remainder of the process, temperature striving to maintain 99.5F but varies a degree or two either way. The second air hole is opened up on day 18 and the rotation of egg stops.
I find the humidity is the hardest part of the process. With this being winter and the heater running, the humidity in the house is low and it causes it to be low in the incubator. I keep a hydrometer and temperature gauge in my incubator so I am aware of what is happening in the confined space. I add a water-saturated wash cloth to the incubator at the beginning of the process and I still have a problem keeping it at 40%.
Now I am on day 19 and trying to get the humidity level to 60% is almost impossible. One of the baby chickens in the eggs has started chirping so it tells me they are still able to live but it is necessary to get the level of humidity up to ensure they have enough moisture to hatch out. I have added dampened paper towels and this helps but it is still not to the level I would like. I read on a forum that someone said to spritz the eggs with 100 degree water. Well I actually doused them good because when I went to add more water to the troughs I spilled the water on accident inside of the incubator. This is probably good because the humidity level has increased.
For those of you who are hatching eggs for the first time, watch your humidity closely. This is a key factor in making sure you have a successful hatch. When I tried hatching with a homemade incubator (the electric skillet), I believe this was the cause of my failure. I did not measure the temperatures or the humidity. Can you imagine what the temperature must have been out in the garage during the summer?
I have learned during my trials of trying to hatch my own eggs and the most important fact has been the necessity of keeping a close watch on temperature and humidity levels. These will determine whether you are successful or not when hatching eggs.
Stay tuned, come this weekend I will be sharing my latest additions to my ever-growing flock of chickens.
Tags: egg hatching, egg hatching process
March 5th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
i think you are spot on with your assessment of the humidity. I just hatched out 22 out of 37 eggs and I think I had two problems: one was a 4 hour power outage when the temps dropped to the 50’s in the school, plus the difficulty of keeping the humidity at the level it needed to be. I will get a hydrometer before I incubate my next batch.
good post
dons last blog post..The Stars Are Out
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March 6th, 2009 at 9:43 am
I have not tried an incubator, but I just had my last baby hatch last night (on the 24th day when I let my hen sit on them. I would have had a 100% hatch rate had one of the eggs not accidfentally gotten crushed. But I tried something interesting for the poor little guy that got crushed… it was not ready to hatch yet even though we were on day 22 and I am not sure how the egg got cracked, (I am suspicious my 4 year old got in there while I wasn’t looking) but the chick inside the egg was still alive. What I did was peeled away the part of the egg that was poking in unnaturally and might have cut the chick. I then put egg shell halves that had already hatched over the crushed part of the egg (because the chick was still alive, but not quite ready to hatch) I then removed all the hatched chicks into a dog crate with a heat lamp so mamma chicken could sit on the remaining unfortunate egg. It actually worked! The crushed chick continued the last two days it seemed to need to hatch without much incicdent. The prosthetic egg shells kept it from getting crushed further and helped it stay moist while it finished growing.
Lst night it finally came out of the egg and was looking like a regular hatched chick and doing well. Sometime during the night thoguh it got away from the mama hen and stayed too cold and unfortunately died. I was pretty disappointed. After all the work we did trying to keep him from dying from a crushed egg, he got too cold and passed. darnit. However, the prosthetic egg did work to protect it until it was ready to come out. Wonder of wonders, it lived long enough to finish its development.
Well, other than that one, I have learned that a mama hen will result in almost a perfect hatch rate. Too bad we can ‘t turn them on and off at will!
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March 6th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Samantha, Knowing what the temps have been around here of late that is probably the reasoning for taking a little longer to hatch. In my opinion it is much easier to let the mother hen hatch the eggs than it is to use an incubator. Sorry to hear that the little chick didn’t survive. That was some quick thinking on your part and very resourceful.
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March 6th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
I love hearing about your incubator experiences, Carole… unfortunately, my little hens are all so broody right now, I don’t need one! LOL
Farm Chick Paulas last blog post..Dreaming of what will be….
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