So here is my story, I got an incubator for my birthday and originally I was not going to incubate this late in the spring but my daughter convinced me that I should make sure the incubator worked properly.
Didn't take much convincing. So I decided to collect a few eggs from my mixed laying flock. I have a Buff Orpington rooster and Barred Rock, Red Sexlink, and Buff Orpington hens. I collected 4 eggs the first day and just stored them in my kitchen which is about 70 degrees, the next day I collected 6 more eggs. That day I put them all into the incubator. The next day I decided to add one more egg to the incubator. I only have one Buff Orpington female and I wanted to try and get at least two of her eggs in the bator. I had a lot of problems decided what temperature and humidity I should try to maintain because I saw soooo many different recommendations. I also was originally unaware of how inacurate the thermometer and hydrometer that came with the incubator were. I decided to buy an accurate thermometer/hydrometer and it showed that I had been incubating my eggs at about 101 degrees and 40% humidity. So when I candled my eggs on day 7 I was sure I had cooked my eggs.
I was going to throw out the eggs but my daughter convinced me to keep the eggs just a couple more days. On day 10 we checked them again and noticed that the mass in the egg was darker and bigger! I now think one of the my major issues the first time was how dark the egg shells on some eggs are. Also on day 10 we realized that one of the eggs never started to develop. So we are now down to 10 eggs. Over the next couple of weeks we kept the temperature at 100 and the humidity around 50%. We candled again on days 14 and 18 and they seemed to be developing. Well, the mass inside is getting bigger and getting more veins. And none of them stink.
It is now 20 days after we stuck the first eggs in the incubator and we had our first two pips this morning!
I think they are starting a day early because we did not store the first 4 eggs at cool enough temperature. I am kind of nervous that we are going to have our chicks hatching over a three day period.
But I was just soooo excited this morning that I had to share my story with all of my fellow chicken lovers! Wish me luck!
More pictures to come!
More pictures to come!
