Pre nuggets and the Brinsea Mini ii Advance

The ducklings have left, their brooder box is empty, clean, disinfected and getting a few new windows put in. If the older birds think they were being punished having to share a coop with a new bantam hen or the yard with some noisy ducks they have no idea what's about to hit them
My fertile Orpington eggs have arrived! 4 Blue and 8 Black

Shipped eggs already have a lower hatch rate than eggs you would collect from your own yard. All sorts of things can affect their viability,  including extreme temperatures and rough handling during transport and changes in air pressure if they need to be flown in
I wanted eggs from a particular breeder so I chose to take the risk, they arrived early on Wednesday the 8th of November. It is advisable to let shipped eggs rest at room temperature for 24 hours  with the large end upward when they arrive, to let the air cell settle. So ours were left in the same room we would incubate along with a bottle of distilled water I would use to increase humidity from their arrival.
On Thursday evening I cleaned and disinfected my incubators and set them runing. I have not used an incubator before, let alone these ones. I wanted to check whether they would hold a steady temperature, and whether there were any issues. All good there

I was unsure whether to set the eggs on Friday evening or Saturday morning, I wanted to be home to watch the hatch, but would they start to pip on day 21, or would the likely be hatching day 21? it can take 24 hours from pip to hatch...
But I'm impatient, so on the evening of Friday the 10th I gathered supplies - jewelery scales, a notebook, my candelling torch a pencil and pen.
I have more faith in the Brinsea, so the eggs I have the most hope for went in there. I started with the 4 blue eggs. All weighed and documented. A chicken egg should loose about 13% of it's weight during incubation as the air cell grows and the chick develops, this is controlled by upping your humidity (if your egg looses weight too fast) or lowering it (if your egg is not loosing enough weight)
A chick incubated where the humidity is too high can drown in excess fluid when it tries to pip internally, a chick incubated where the humidity was too low can become shrinkwrapped in the membrane when it tries to hatch.

I also candelled the eggs with an LED torch to check the state of their air cell and for cracks in the shells. My first 6 looked great! maybe slightly more porous than I had expected but otherwise good. I was also used to pictures of eggs candelled partway through incubation, for some reason I expected their air cells to be bigger already but I could barely see them.
And then I got to egg 7, the egg itself had no external damage, but the air cell moved around when I turned the egg. Uh-oh! detached air cell!
I filled the Brinsea with the best eggs, filled the water cup to it's indicated line and let it start on it's way.

I was left with 5 eggs, I had expected to just lay them in the Rotohatch incubator and let it auto turn them.... 2 of those eggs had detached air cells, and 1 had a weird bubble as well. A quick look on backyardchickens.com showed that all may not be lost with these eggs.
I took an empty egg carton and trimmed it to fit the incubator, trimmed the bottom so the eggs could get air flow and set them inside.
Apparently if the air cells on these were to reattach, it would have happened during the 24 hours they sat. But I can try incubating with the eggs standing vertically, turning after 36-42 hours very gently and by putting something under one end of the carton. I will stop turning these on day 16 instead of day 18. Hmm we'll see how we go here! it seems a waste not to at least try

 

My Brinsea Mini ii advance.

It's a neat little incubator! has a huge viewing window for watching hatches, holds 7 large hen eggs and plates are available for bantam or quail eggs. There is also a cardboard insert to replace the removeable turning disk with so the chicks have something to stand on during hatching.

I understand that with the older model you had to remove the lid every time you topped up the water container, but with the mini ii, there is an opening on the outside, which is great!

It's a great incubator for a newbie like me, very set and forget. You simply press the + and - buttons together to get to the menu, here you can control temperature, turning angle, how far above and below set temperature the incubator can get before it sets off a warning and whether or not it turns your eggs automatically. You can also set the number of days for your hatch. All factory settings have been set for chicken eggs except for some reason, you will want to change the number of days from 40 to 21 (or most things, obviously, if you are setting other bird eggs)

 

There are a few other things you can play with on this model, including being able to set a period of time to cool the incubator for about half an hour, this is to replicate a mother hen leaving her nest. I haven't used this option this time.

You will find that your mini advance will make a bit of noise getting up to temperature, and that it beeps before turning eggs. Remember to read the instructions! the incubator wants to be in a room away from draughts but with good airflow, also you don't really want the room to get below 20 degrees C overnight or in a room that gets too warm during the day.

My power plug for this has a big boxy part on the plug end which means I couldn't plug anything else into the wall plug next to it (not a huge issue) also I left a window open the first night and set off the 'your room is too cold for optimal use of this incubator!' alarm. pressing okay stopped the alarm but -RM remained on the screen until I warmed the room and pressed okay again.

 

The Rotohatch

this incubator I got from a workmate, it includes a built in hygrometer and has an autoturner, has plates you swap out before hatching and has a digital display and easy to set temperature.

I don't really trust the temperature or hygrometer readings  on this machine, I had looked at buying a good thermometer and hygrometer to rely on instead but we managed to 'get talked into' (haha) buying the Brinsea incubator instead. I had intended to only set  eggs in that, but as we recieved 12...
my workmate has hatched in this incubator so we will see how we go.
it's not really designed to hold eggs vertically so if things go wrong, I won't really be able to blame it.

It doesn't really have a great viewing area during hatch, and the fan is noisy. Temperature also climbed about .2 degrees higher than I wanted the first day but seems to have settled. I won't be able to comment on turning ability as I will have to do this by hand. I do have to avoid placing eggs too close to the turning bar that hangs down as it rotates.

 

I'm excited and nervous to candle on day 7 and see if we have any development!

 

 

Not used in this experiment - the broodiest of hens, Tanky
Tanqueray goes broody about once a month. She was broody the day the ducklings arrived, and she is broody as they leave. She's more determined than any other hen, after about 6 days in the broody cage she still races straight for the nest boxes if given the opportunity.
I have no doubt, she'd be a great mama. But she wouldn't be able to sit on all of the eggs, which would mean we would end up with 2 groups of babies to protect and integrate. Plus part of the point of this exercise is to have birds that imprint on us and are friendly, which won't really happen with Tanky as mum.