Are you someone that would like hatch their own chickens? Well, if so, you have come to the right place!
Starting a backyard flock with either a small or large incubator can be both fun and educational. When you are hatching eggs, your success rate will depend on a great number of factors- such as the inherent degree of difficulty in hatching eggs from your chosen breed. Depending on how careful you are when dealing with your incubator is 100% in your control. Below, I have listed a few tips to help you get ready for hatching your very own chicken eggs in an incubator.
Why Should You Hatch Eggs?!
Instead of having to buy chicken eggs every few years, you can continue your chicken flock by hatching eggs from your very own chickens!
This experience can be both interesting and educational.
Hatching and raising baby chicks from eggs from your own flock is one of many ways to renew your flock. This is extremely essential if you are breeding your hens with your roosters.
Hatching Eggs in a Tabletop Incubator
The type of incubator does these 3 things:
1. It keeps the warm (around 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit)
2. While keeping the eggs warm, it also keeps the humidity at the right level to inspire proper development. Starting relative humidity is about 45-55% throughout most of the incubation period, then it goes up to 56-65% for the last couple of days.
The incubation period is about 3 weeks or 21 days.
Collecting Eggs for Hatching
Most people tend to collect their eggs and store them for about week or 10 days. It is known that if you try to hatch eggs older than that, there is a possibility that most will not hatch.
After gathering your eggs, you can write the date on them in which you collected them. This gives you the reminder of when you collected them.
You should store your eggs upright, at about 55 degrees Fahrenheit. It is alright to just store them at room temperature out of direct sunlight before incubating them.
Which Eggs Are Worthy of Hatching??
You can use dirty or clean eggs when deciding between the eggs. BUT putting dirty eggs into an incubator for 21 days is not the best option. You really do not want dirt or manure sitting in a warm and/or moist environment when your chickens are hatching.
Egg Position
When looking at an egg, you notice a pointy side and a much rounder side. The pointed end of the egg should remain lower than the rounder side, this will lead to better development of the embryo. This process is much easier in an incubator because you have an egg rack to hold them up. Sometimes when the eggs are lying on their side, bad things could happen.
During the first 18 days of incubation, you must turn the eggs periodically. Opening the incubator could make it difficult to regulate the incubator’s temperature and its humidity. You could invest in an automatic egg turner that could help resolve this issue.
3 days before the eggs are scheduled to hatch, you should stop turning them. From this day, you should remove the egg rack and lay the eggs onto their sides. They should not be touched from that movement on, even if they are completely hatched and your new baby chicks are fully dried!