Time for the count-down! In 21 days (April 9th) we should have some hatching eggs, if all goes well. I marked an "x" on one side and an "o" on the other side of each egg because I will be turning the eggs several times a day. See those 2 tiny white eggs at the very top? These are my experimental eggs. Word on the street is, some folks have had success incubating recently refrigerated eggs. I was really hoping Goldie, my tiny pet bantam would lay an egg to add to the other 29 but the last eggs she layed was several days ago. I decided to grab 2 of those and add to mix. It will be a MIRACLE if one of those 2 hatch since I didnt even bother to let it come to room temperature before adding it to the incubator. Also, theres a rather large egg that might be a double-yolker. If the chicks make it to hatching there has only been one case that I know of where both chicks survived and that was with an assisted hatch. This could really be interesting. Im confident in my ability to do an assisted hatch but its nerve wracking just the same :O Having raised parrots and incubating their eggs I did several assisted hatches but never for twins!
So heres the run-down....in 7-10 days I will candle the eggs and see which ones are fertile and developing. On day 18 the incubator will go into "lockdown" which just means I will not open it for any reason. Humidity during hatching is very important. Chicks should hatch anytime between days 19 and 25.
So while there wont be a whole heck of a lot to see or report on the next week or so I will post other happenings from the farm :)
The temp you see is NOT the normal temp the incubator will stay at. Its low because I just added all the eggs. It will slowly creep back up to a steady 99.5-100 and humidity around 40-45%.
In the meantime I'm picking out select eggs from the daily egg-gather to incubate. So far I've got these 10....Im really hoping my tiny little bantam hen, Goldie, will lay one of her teeny eggs so I can incubate it :) Maybe tomorrow.