Emily's 2012 Hatch

It has been an eventful day!!  

Today is day 17 of incubation.  

When I pick up the eggs, I can feel the chick moving underneath the shell and it's amazing.   There is no space inside anymore, and candling shows me nothing aside from the air pocket in the top of the egg.   

I am still turning the eggs, and keeping the humidity at about 40%.   Tomorrow is when I stop turning them, and raise the humidity to 65%, for hatching.  It's very excited!!  

I will post a few pictures in a little bit.  Busy day today.

Today is day 12 of incubation.  9 more days.

Our chicks now have toe nails, feathers on their backs, visible serrated combs, and are drawing calcium from the egg shell to help with the ossification of the bones.  Visibly, if the shell were to crack the peeps inside would appear to be a chick and not just an embryo.  

I also wanted to share what an infertile egg looks like.   In the first few days of incubation it's impossible to tell an infertile egg from a fertile egg as the embryo is so small it's easily not detected.  However, at this stage of the process it's easy to tell an infertile egg.   They GLOW.  Here is a picture of our only infertile egg.  You can see the shadow of the yolk and how bright the entire egg looks.   Following that picture is a picture of a viable egg containing a 12 day peep, which now appears to just be dark, as the egg is full of chick and veins.  It's a bad picture, but it's hard to get a good picture at this point as the chick takes up much of the shell and doesn't allow for light to pass by. I am holding both eggs in exactly the same sideways position, to allow for accurate comparison.

Today is day 11 of incubation. 

So I totally and completely over-reacted yesterday.  I forgot that the chicks double in size every 24 hours from day 8-10.  I candled them on Friday and they were small...then I didn't candle them until Monday and what I saw was not what I expected.   The chicks had grown so much in those 72 hours that they didn't float as they did previously and I assumed they had stopped developing. 

I was wrong.  I have candled all 36 eggs today.   I have marked each one that I saw veins and movement with a check mark.  There is one infertile egg that is marked with an IF.  There are two that showed no veins, no movement, and exhibited what's called a 'blood ring'.   A blood ring is when the embryo dies and the blood drains out of it's circulatory system and rings around the inside of the egg.  It's also known as a 'death ring' and is a sure sign of passing.   I have marked those two eggs with question marks.   The three questionable eggs will be left in the incubator unless they start to weep or stink.  They will hold heat and keep the temperature in the incubator more stable.  This is known as a 'heat sink', as the heat dissipates from the egg more slowly than it does the air, and helps the incubator come back to temperature faster when I take the lid off to roll them. 

Here is a picture of today's eggs.  You can see the checks on the 33 viable eggs and, to the left, you can see the two eggs with question marks and the one marked 'IF'.  

Today is day 10 of incubation. 

I turned the eggs all weekend but did not candle them.  I candled them now.  I candled 12 and placed them all together on one side, so I can go through the whole bunch over the next few days.

It is hard to duplicate nature, even with today's great technology.  There are lots of factors that are out of our control, despite our best efforts.  

I'm not optimistic about the eggs I candled today.  The veins have blurred, they are cloudy, and are not floating as I feel they should.   Please take what I say with a grain of salt because I do not have a great track record of predicting failed eggs.   With my last hatch I predicted that two of the eggs were bad, however they both hatched into perfectly wonderful chicks.  

I'm reminded that incubating eggs is playing with life and death.   We often get the pleasure of growing and raising these adorable little birds, but occasionally there will be death and it's part of the process.  I hope that I am wrong but all the eggs I candled looked like this one.  It just doesn't feel right.

I hope I am wrong.  I hope they are fine and my inexperienced eye is incorrect.  

The reasons for this could be many.   Could be unhealthy parent stock made for weak embryos.  Could be the way the eggs were treated before incubation.  Were they washed?  Were they disinfected?  Could be incubation itself...was there a heat spike I was unaware of?  

Only time will tell.  

Today is day 7 of incubation!  

Our peeps are really starting to get some personality.  They float and bob around their eggs while they have the room to do so.  Today they developing their beak and egg tooth, as you can see from the picture.

I am still turning our eggs 3-5 times a day.  Basically if it's been more than 2 hours when I go into the basement, then I turn the eggs.   I turn them simply by running my hand over them so they roll.  It's not exact and it's not precise, but it's random and that's how a mother hen would do it.  

Upon candling today I can see both eyes clearly as the chick floats and wiggles.  Here is a picture of a peep from today.   You can see the darkest part of the mass is an eye and the other eye is visible too. The veins have now extended almost entirely around the inside of the shell, and you can see the shadow of them in this picture too.

Today is day 5 of incubation!  

Today our peeps are growing their reproductive organs and officially decide if they will be hens or roosters.   Our babies also have visible eyes now.  When I candled them this morning I could see eyes on all the embryos that I looked at.  The eyes look like a dark pencil mark, much more defined than the rest of the shadowy embryo.   The eye is visible as the peep floats upwards towards the shell and then disappears as the peep turns his/her head.   Hopefully within the next few days, as they become larger, I will be able to photograph the eye.  

Here is a picture of what our embryos look like!  Not quite like chicks yet, but we're on our way!

And here is a picture of one of our 5 day old peeps.  

You might notice a few lighter spots in the shell.  All shells are porous, and allow for water to evaporate from the inside to the outside.   As the water evaporates it creates room for the growing chick.  This is why it is important not to wash hatching eggs or paint them, because it could push bacteria in through the pores, or prevent the proper evaporation from taking place. 
When shells are TOO porous it can be a sign of unhealthy hens, and could result in poorly developed chicks or chicks that cannot hatch properly.   
All of the eggs we have set right now look perfectly healthy and normal though. 

Today is Day 4.  Our babies look like this: 

Our embryos have beating hearts and have started forming the wings, legs, ears, nose and tongue.  It's been a busy 96 hours!  

I candled 6 more eggs to find them all developing.  Here is the clearest picture I could get at this stage in the game.   If you look closely you can see the shadow of our embryo and the veins that stretch out from it.  

The incubator is holding steady at 101*f on top of the eggs.  The humidity is holding at 30%.  I'm very pleased with these numbers and hope they continue. 

Today is Day 3 of incubation.  

I need to stop at the dollar store and get a flashlight to candle these eggs.  I don't have one, and so when I candled them this morning I used the flashlight app on my phone.  Haha!  Once I have a flashlight I will be able to take pics with my phone and post them here.  Tomorrow.  

So, I candled a sampling of eggs from all areas of the incubator...the middle, the corners, the edges.  I candled 6 eggs and saw life in all of them.   The shells are barely tinted and easily seen through.   The embryo is a red dot the size of a pencil eraser with red veins growing out from it like a spider.  

My friend Melissa loaned me her preschool egg development kit and so I'll post a pic of day 3's embryo.

We are going to hatch more chickens this year!  I am very excited to have a new and larger incubator for this year's hatch.  It is a different type of incubator...instead of the forced-air Turn-X from last year, that only fit 15 chicken eggs, we are going to use a still-air Hovabator that holds 48 chicken eggs (I think I could easily fit 54 though.  LOL!). 

Forced-air means that there is a fan to keep the temperature stable throughout the entirety incubator.  Still-air means that there is NO fan and, with the heating element in the lid, the air will fall in temperature towards the bottom of the incubator.  

You might recall from last year that we aimed for 99.5*f exactly with the forced-air.  With a still-air we have to aim for a slightly higher temperature based on a reading on top of the eggs.  If the temperature at the top of the eggs is 101* then it will be closer to 98* at the bottom...which averages out to the temp we need to incubate well!  

We are hatching broilers (meat birds) that were provided by a local commercial hatchery who only produces this hybrid of cornish-cross. This breed is made for efficient meat production only and not for laying eggs. Here is what they look like as chicks:

They are adorable little pale yellow fluffballs!!!  
They are NOT so cute as adults.  White, often bald on their bellies.  They are lazy lazy lazy and only live to eat.  It has been said that if you don't butcher this breed by 16 weeks that they will drop dead of a heart attack (instead of living 5-10 years, like a normal chicken) simply because they eat so very much.
Here is a nice pic of the adults:

These birds are going to my Auntie Vicki again, who will raise them to fill her freezer.  

I set the eggs yesterday at 5pm.  They will hatch Easter weekend...probably on the Saturday.   Incubation is 21 days, but it's a less exact science with a still air incubator because of the potential for 'hot spots' and 'cold spots' caused by no air circulation.  It will be fine, it just means that the hatch will happen over the course of 24-48 hours instead of 6-10 or so.   

Here is a picture of the eggs nicely laid in the incubator!!  It's beautiful!  The 'x' on top of each egg lets me know that I am rotating them properly, as they must be turned 3-5 times a day such as a hen would do. 

I plan to air the hatch with my webcam, which will be placed directly IN the incubator, for good view and sound.   

I hope you'll follow along with us!  Feel free to ask questions in the comment section, or read back through our 2011 hatch. 

Thanks!  And enjoy!