The farmer who cuts our hay loaned me his incubator. I thought my chickens would sit on their own eggs but that hasn't happened yet and I was getting impatient so I decided it might be fun to hatch them myself. I added another 11 eggs since I took this picture so there are now 26 eggs, 3 of them are duck eggs. I have never seen my ducks "doing it" so I don't know if the eggs are fertile or not. I don't have high hopes that many, if any, of these will hatch because I have no idea what the humidity is in there or if my thermometer is accurate. The hatching temperature for chickens is 101.5 for an incubator without a fan. The humidity should be 60 to 65% for the first 18 days and 80 to 85% the last 3 days. All I can say about the humidity is that I put water in there and it's humid. The incubator is very old and wouldn't reach higher than 95 degrees so I put a heat lamp over it to bring up the temperature. I have to turn the eggs over 3 times a day so they develop correctly that's why I have an X drawn on them so I know which ones I've flipped. A few days before their hatch date I will stop flipping. In a week I will candle all the eggs to see if something is growing inside. I need to find a bright flashlight to hold them up to. Chicks should hatch in 21 days and ducklings in 26 to 28 days.
No comments:
Post a Comment