Hatching Chicks - Day 1
Getting Ready for a Fall Hatch
Many of my laying hens are getting older and will need to be replaced soon. So I decided to hatch out some of their fertile eggs this fall. The young pullets raised from this hatch should be ready to lay eggs around March next year.
My rooster is an Easter Egger and the hens that laid these eggs were Production Reds, Golden Laced Wyandottes, Turkens, and one Production Grey and one Minorca. So the offspring are a colorful mixture. Some already have the fluffy beard and sideburns of the father, and some are definitely taking after their Turken mothers. 🙂
It’s so much fun to have a brooder box of baby chicks cheeping away in our guest room again!
I started with 30 eggs in my still air incubator 3 weeks ago…20 of them hatched. Of the ones that didn’t hatch, 3 never developed an embryo and the rest died shortly before they should have hatched.
My biggest complaint about the still air incubator is that it can be very difficult to keep a stable temperature in it. The morning of hatch day, the temperature dropped down to 96 degrees. I’m afraid that might have killed some of the chicks. So I am looking into the Brinsea incubators that keep a thermostatically controlled temperature of 99.5 for the duration of the hatch. They have them on sale right now…so maybe I’ll ask for an early Christmas present.
Do you hatch eggs from your hens? Do you have a broody hen or do you use an incubator? What incubator do you use?
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