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By y@mf5, June 10, 2009

Here are the final stats from our hatching project:

14 out of 39 eggs hatched = 35.9% Hatch Rate, that really stinks.  BUT we now know what we can do to improve that for the next time.

1. Select good quality eggs by candling them prior to incubation.  “Splotchy” looking eggs means that the shell is porous and can allow bacteria to migrate into the egg vs. a non-splotchy egg.  Only 1 out of the 7 splotchy/porous eggs hatched.
2. Use the digital thermometer/hygrometer.  We relied primarily on the bulb-thermometer that came with the incubator, and just used the digital thermometer to read the relative humidity.  The temps read anywhere from 2-4 degrees cooler on the digital thermometer vs. the bulb, and since the chicks hatched a day late we realized that the digital thermometer was more accurate.
3. Do a better job of cleaning dirty spots on the eggs.

The chicks that made it:  #s 8, 13, 17, 18, 20, 23, 24, 26, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, and 38.  #26 was a splotchy/porous egg that hatched.  #33 was incubated upside down days 0 through 7, before it was righted.  #23, which was the most active, was the second chick to hatch-out (#29 was first to hatch).

It was a great learning experience for the kids.  All 14 chicks are lively and well, and they have been moved into the brooding ring in the coop.  It will be interesting to see what the male:female ratio is!

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By y@mf5, June 4, 2009

The eggs are off the turner – this will give the chicks plenty of time to orient themselves.  I wonder if they’re rocking back in forth inside – you know how it is when you’re in a boat for a while then walk on land?  Well, I imagine the same applies for these chicks.  We could have taken them off the turner at day 14, but a mother hen wouldn’t stop turning her clutch, so a few extra days on the turner couldn’t hurt.

#12 didn’t make it. #33 (upside down on days 0-7) is okay – even saw it’s feet kick a little.  #23 was showing lots of movement – must be a cockerel.  There’s not much to see when candling at this point – just an even bigger dark spot with light spots where the air sac and yolk are.  We think we have 31 good eggs remaining, but even so, we’re only expecting ~60% hatch rate.  We’ll know come Sunday – hope to hear some pipping before church or by the time we get back from church (fact:  chicks will begin vocalizing or “pipping” 1-6 hrs. before they hatch).

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By y@mf5, May 31, 2009

Today is day 14 of incubating chicks.  I wish I had space to set up my tri-pod in our little bathroom where we candle, but alas – I’m lazy, and you’ll have to put up with this blurry photo:

The dark blob on the bottom there is the embryo, and you can kind of see a nice blood vessel on the left side going up from the embryo towards the flashlight.  Anyway, we lost 6 eggs today, bringing our total viable egg count to 32.  The 6 we lost today were #s 5 (which was okay last week), 9 (porous/splotchy when candled last time), 16 (porous/splotchy), 19 (dropped prior to incubation), 27 (porous/splotchy), and 37 (was put in incubator upside down).  So next time we incubate eggs, I guess we’ll need to be more selective and candle the eggs prior to incubating to make sure we don’t get the porous/splotchy shelled variety.  Our last candling date is day 18, this Thursday.  We’ll remove the eggs from the automatic egg turner so the chicks can get properly oriented prior to hatching.

Here’s a really good link with photos and video clips of egg candling/chick development:  http://lancaster.unl.edu/4H/embryology/candlingphotos.shtml

Here’s a cool YouTube clip – as you can see, a live chick embryo is quite active!

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By y@mf5, May 25, 2009

We had intended to candle the eggs yesterday, day 7, to see how our little chicks were developing, but the weekend was quite busy beginning w/ J‘s 10th birthday, a get-together with college friends, DH‘s parents visiting, visiting my dad’s gravesite with my family, and DH & I going out to see Star Trek (it’s been 6 yrs since just the two of us went to see a movie – sad, isn’t it?).  But I ramble.  Here’s the candling details:

We started out with this ancient piece of equipment which was given to us by my FIL.  He stumbled across this while cleaning out an area of the shop up at the farm in NJ:

And here’s what the result was:

A lot of the light “escaped” from the sides of the candler, so it was very difficult to see inside the egg.  Brown eggs are difficult to candle anyways, but the escaping light made it more difficult to see.

I took matters into my own hand, grabbed my mag-lite and a thick rubber band I had saved from a broccoli bunch from the grocery store.  I made a make-shift egg candler:

The make-shift candler worked like a charm!  The egg, #7,  candled in this pic below shows the porosity of this particular egg (splotchy-looking), which has a lower chance of maturing to hatch.  This egg also has a red-ring around it, which is indicative of bacteria that had penetrated the egg membrane, therefore causing an infection.  This chick has no chance of making it until hatch, and we suspect that it is already dead:

A good egg (which I couldn’t get a pic of, sorry) when candled, will reveal a dark spot with spidery, web-looking veins around the inside of the egg.

We decide to cull this egg from the incubator and open it up to show the kids what a day 5-8ish chick embryo looks like (brings back memories of my embryology lab in college).  You can clearly see the eye (big black spot), and the wing/leg buds:

In the pic below (I apologize if you’re sqeamish), you can clearly see the ‘ring’ which indicates bacterial infection.  In a normally developing embryo, the ring is not as confluent or well-defined:

Out of the 39 eggs we put in the incubator a week ago, we know that one definitely didn’t make it.  We suspect others that aren’t developing too, but for now we’ve decided to leave them as we can’t definitively tell.  From our observations of today’s candling, egg #s 9, 10, 14, 16, 26, and 27 have splotchy/porous shells, but no indication of bacterial infection.  Some of these have live embryos, others are difficult to see.  Egg #19, which was accidentally dropped (but not cracked) before incubation appears live and okay.  Egg #s 33 and 37 were placed in the incubator upside down, but now have been ‘righted’.  Some of the clearly good eggs were quite lively.  They would move around a lot when they were candled, and were very difficult to capture with the camera!

We know for sure that Rocky & Bullwinkle have done their jobs – way to go, boys!

The next projected candling date:  day-14, next Sunday.

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By y@mf5, May 17, 2009

This is it – the moment the kids have eagerly been waiting for.  Today is Day 0 – the day the eggs we’ve collected over the last week have been moved into the incubator.  We’ve collected 40, but as we were examining each egg, one had a tiny hole in the shell and had to be “discarded” (i.e., put in the fridge – to be fried at a later date).  39 eggs are in the incubator, but how many will make it until the end?

Here’s J writing a number on each egg:

C places the eggs in the incubator (in egg turner), “pointy” side down.  If we didn’t have the egg turner, we’d place the eggs on the wire-mesh floor of the incubator and manually turn the eggs 2-3 times a day (like what a hen would do).  Turning eggs allows for proper embryo development – the yolk will be centered in the egg and not stick to the shell lining.  The incubator is placed in an area away from drafts and direct sunlight (our bathroom).

The heat is on, water is added to the tray and we monitor the temperature and humidity – ideally it should stay at 100 degrees, ~60% humidity.  We use a thermometer that came with the incubator which is placed right on top of the eggs.  Temperature can vary within the incubator, so we have to make sure that the egg temp is ~100 degrees.

We’ve also added a digital thermometer that also detects relative humidity.  Plus it’s a remote sensor, and we can read the temp/humidity on the read-out display that sits on the kitchen counter.  So even though the incubator is out of sight, we can monitor the settings every time we walk through the kitchen.

We will candle the eggs 7 days from now – it will be very interesting to see how many of these eggs are actually viable.