Nugget hatch day

As day 18 ends and your eggs no longer turn, as the humidity builds with your anxiety levels, theres really not much to do now except wait, check whether you need to add more water and wait some more.
Or, if you are me, read and re read what to expect from day 18 onwards and check obsessively to see whether anything is pipping yet.
Your eggs should hatch day 21, but i wasn't sure whether that meant they would pip on day 21 or whether they should be hatched by then. It doesn't help that they could hatch earlier or later than that. Hatching day 19 probably means your incubator was running a bit hot, or maybe that the eggs had been at correct temperatures to start before you set them.
Haching days later could mean your incubator was a bit cooler than it should be, I found many people who stated they had eggs hatch as late as day 28, but anything that came out really late had issues.
You could candle I guess, there seems to be as many people online who will tell you it's okay to open the incubator whenever, they hatched eggs in their hands and let their friends hold eggs while exhausted chicks pushed the remaining eggs shell of their tiny heads,
as there are people who tell you don't touch the eggs or open the incubator! your tiny chick has spent days trying to get into the correct position to find it's air cell. If you screw it up for them they can pip in the wrong place and drown or hit a vein and bleed out. Removing the cover of your incubator will screw up all the humidity you are trying to keep high enough that the membrane will be ideal for them to break out of it.

We didn't open ours, even though I wanted to. It's possible people who open their incubators whenever they want, live in places where the humidity is high enough that it won't affect their hatching chicks. I didn't want to hurt their chances of finding the air cell. If they didn't get further than this stage, I didn't want it to be because I just couldn't wait.

At the end of day 20 we got our first external pip.

 

Egg 7 had pipped into the air cell, taken their first breaths and then broken a tiny hole through the shell, yay! I knew it could take about 24 hours from now if it even did hatch, the chick needs to absorb it's blood supply and yolk. It needs to rest and breathe and eventually start using it's egg tooth, legs and neck muscles to zip around the egg shell, breaking pieces off in a line the entire way around so it can get out.

It didn't go any further that night and had maybe made its' pip hole a tiny bit bigger by the time I left for work friday morning, neither had the others.

I got a call at work about 11am from Miss A,

'Guess what, we have a chick! and it's not who you think it is!'

Egg 10, in record time had pipped and zipped and somehow heaved himself out of his vertically positioned egg.

 

 

He was damp and exhausted, peeping and flopping around.

Hatching is hard work!

 

 

By the time I got home from work he was much fluffier and energetic. He'd do what I called a crazy circuit, sleep by egg 10, peep, frantically squish himself over egg 9, sleep by egg 1, crash into egg 10 and sleep again.

Chicks can survive for (i think) about 36 hours off their absorbed egg yolk. He didn't need to come out yet. I didn't want to upset the incubator humidity. Some people will remove their chicks as they hatch, it stops them playing chicken football with their hatching friends. Some will leave them all until they have hatched and say chicken football encourages the remaining chicks to hatch.

We only had 4 eggs in the Brinsea, you an fit 7, it could be that Orpingtons lay big eggs and the chicks are large, but I really can't imagine having 7 hatching chicks in here.

Egg 7 peeped and slowly worked on her pip hole, chipping away, sleeping, peeping, all while being knocked about and slep on by number 10.

It took almost 23 hours before anything much else happened. All of a sudden there was a line of broken shell, working counter clockwise she quickly chipped away at her egg prison.

 

 

 

It only took a few minutes and she was out!

She laid on the floor, panting and wet and so tired!

Number 10 raced all over the place.

 

I realised watching this video that egg 1 had already pipped too, you can see her little beak poking out through her pip hole.

She started about 6pm and decided to do things a bit differently.

 

 

As number 10 and 7 threw themselves around, number 1 decided to just push her hole face through her pip hole.

Oh well, she can breathe I thought, she should be fine.

I went to bed with 2 and a half hatched chicks in the Brinsea. Nothing happening in the Rotohatch although that was expected.

 

On Saturday morning number 7 and number 10 went to their waiting brooder box to leave number 1 to finish hatching in peace.

 

And she did! she got to stay in a bit longer to fluff up.

The brooder box is the same one we used for the wild ducks, cleaned and disinfected. We divided it in half with a cardboard wall and put down a layer of paper towels for the first 4 days, food was sprinkled on the paper towels while the chicks learn what is food and hopefully they will eat that and not the wood shavings.

 

I had though egg 9 had a good chance and egg 12 was a possible hatch. We moved 12 into the Brinsea and decided to give them a few more days. We removed and opened egg 11, this chick had quit before day 18.

 

Just after day 21 we had 3 happy healthy nuggets! all look good, absorbed everything, good eyes, legs and feet, no bum issues. They slept under the ecoglow, nibbled their started crumbs and got used to drinking water on their little wobbly legs

candling day 18. Lock down!

I was supposed to update these just after they had happened... But life has been so busy lately between work, dealing with our older hens - the broody and the non broody, the ducks - wild or hormonal domestics and trying to keep on top of making sure the incubators were topped up with water, and the eggs in the Rotohatch were turned on time.
On the evening of Sunday the 26th of November I quit turning the 4 remaining Rotohatch eggs, apparently it is a good idea to stop here with air cell damaged eggs as you can give them a little longer to get into hatch position. We didn't candle on this day.
I've read that by this time, turning eggs is less important. I was worried though, on day 14 we removed a quitter, our chances of anything hatching were narrowing, would anyone make it out of their egg?

The Brinsea incubator hummed away, and every 45 minutes it would beep and slide the turning disk around on it's own, the eggs would roll over.

On Monday evening I re read through the manuals again, several times. One thing that confused me... the Brinsea said it's automatic turning would stop when the counter on top said there was only 2 days left... but that would be on day 19, isn't lock down day 18? so I spent a good chunk of my evening scrolling through forums, hatching calculators and web pages trying to figure out when I should prepare the eggs for hatch day.
Seems you can stop turning about day 16 or 19 if you want, and it also seems most people locked down day 18, so that's what we went for.

Tuesday evening, anxious as ever, i prepared my notebook full of egg weights, jewelry scales and torch. We started with the Brinsea, carefully removed the lid, removed the turning tray for cleaning as it would no longer be needed

 

 

and replaced with a piece of non slip shelf liner. The Brinsea Mini ii advance comes with a piece of corrugated cardboard cut into the exact shape needed, it's designed to be used during hatching and thrown away. You do need something non slip here as if your chicks hatch onto a slippery surface it can cause leg issues when they try wandering around.

I'm not actually sure where in New Zealand to get replacements of the Brinsea cardboard ones, (although they are available) so it made more sense to just use it as a template for the shelf liner.

 

Egg 1 and egg 7 were weighed and candled

 

 

 

They were right on track! weight loss maybe a touch more than i'd hope, the embryo now fills most of the egg. There are good visible veins. Air cell for egg one looked great, air cell for egg 7 was a bit saddle shaped but should be okay. I marked the area of the air cell with a pencil, placed the lid on the incubator, turned off the auto turn function and filled up both sides of the water cup to raise humidity.

 

Moving on to the Rotohatch

 

Egg 9 and 10 both looked like this, good!

 

 

I'm pretty sure this is egg 12, unfortunately it doesn't show up well here but the air cell on this egg was massive, taking up probably half of the egg. The embryo moved but was far smaller than it should have been. We weren't sure that this chick would develop enough to hatch, and even if it did, whether it would have enough room to turn so it could pip and hatch.

 

 

Egg 11 didn't look great either, it was hard to find the air cell, weight loss was good and the embryo was a good size, but there were no veins, only a cloudy area above the embryo. We kept it in anyway just incase. If it had quit, it was definitely recent, I didn't think the chances of it rotting and exploding were high. Plus we just didn't feel sure.

Eggs 9 and 10 were moved into the Brinsea where i felt they had a better chance, we cut down egg cartons to fit so they could stand vertically with their air cells upright.

Eggs 1 and 7 were left horizontal.

 

In the Rotohatch, we filled the entire base with 10mm of water, placed the cleaned and disinfected lower hatching tray in with a piece of shelf liner on it. Eggs 11 and 12 were placed on it in their egg carton.

 

Nothing to do now but keep water topped up in the Brinsea and wait

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

candlling day 14

Day 14 rocked around, exciting! at this point we were down to 7 eggs, with 5 removed that didn't seem to have been developing at all.
2/3rds of the way through incubation and time to see if we have anything still developing

 

 

I forget which egg exactly was which, but most looked great! nice healthy veins, in some you could see the little chicken embryos moving around.

 

Egg Number 8 didn't look as good, there were no visible veins, only the small dark shadow of an embryo and cloudy patches. After a while of trying to decide whether to leave it, we worried that it didn't look right, what if it had died, what if the egg exploded and infected the other good eggs?
We removed it and checked, it looks like this baby had died maybe about day 12, I will save the pictures for another update

 

Our older birds are doing well, the weather is warming up and the days are getting longer which means more frequent eggs. It also means more frequent broody hens

 

 

Tanqueray seems to go broody about once a month. She's quite determined and can take a while to break. Tanky is doing a lot better with our original hens, she's found her spot on the roost and hangs out with the big ladies.

 

 

 

Sunny here has also gone broody in her typically bitey angry way. It never lasts long and she's back to runing around the yard harrasing the duck hens. It seems a few days with Sunny in broody prison helped Tanqueray integrate a bit better. Blue is in the back of the wheel barrow trying to encourage her friends to lay here for some reason.

 

And last but not least, our wild ducklings like to wander the yard. In the mornings they are already in the duck ponds, eating out of the grandpa feeder, drilling holes in the lawn... and at night they wander back to the flooded paddock to sleep with the other wild ducks.
So much for them being gone