Incubating Tips
Thank You for your recent purchase of our Fresh and Fertile Hatching Eggs. We hope your eggs arrived safely and intact. These tips are included for your convenience and to help answer some frequently asked questions.
The Eggs have Arrived!
Now that you have received your eggs and are letting them rest from their long journey to you, it is a good time to make any last minute adjustments to your incubator, which should have been running for at least 24 hours prior to the arrival of your eggs.
If you are using a still air type incubator, your temperature should be regulated to 101F., or 99.5 F. if using a circulated air model. The use of two or more calibrated thermometers placed in different areas of the incubator is highly recommended as a back up and to check for hot spots in the incubator, especially in the still air models. Once the temperature has been stableized and the water pans have been filled, you are ready to place your eggs in the incubator.
Setting and Turning
If available, the use of an automatic turner is desirable, otherwise hand turning of the eggs will be required. Place the eggs with the pointed end down into the turner trays. An automatic turner will rotate or turn the eggs on average every two hours or 12 times a day. In comparison, a mother hen will turn her eggs an average of 26 times a day! The more exercise the embryo gets, the stronger the chick will be.
If you must hand turn the eggs, lay the eggs on their sides and gently give each one a 180 degree turn a minimum of 3 times a day, or more often if your schedule permits. The key is to be consistent and turn the eggs the same number of times each day throughout the turning cycle. Be sure to keep the water pans filled as recommended to keep the humidity level at about 55% and stop turning the eggs 3 days prior to hatching.
The Hatch
This is the most critical stage in the entire cycle, and also the time when human interference can cause an otherwise great hatch to become a mediocre hatch at best.
Three days prior to hatching, remove the eggs from the automatic turner and lay them on their sides on the hatching tray.
At this time you want to be sure the water pans are filled and you will want to adjust your vents to increase the humidity level to about 65-75% At this point, you want to shut the incubator and you do not want to open it again until the hatch is complete, usually about 24 to 36 hours after the first chick hatches.
Do not be in a rush to remove the chicks from the incubator. They will be fine without food or water for up to 48 hours after they hatch as the yolk they absorbed just prior to hatching will sustain them.
Too many people can't help themselves at this point and they open the incubator to remove those first few chicks and thereby release all the warm humid air that the remaining chicks in the shell require to break free and thus get stuck in the shell and die. Nothing is more heartbreaking than to do an egg breakout after the hatch and finding full term babies that could have hatched but became entrapped in the shell and perished.
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We hope you found these tips helpful, they are gleaned from our many years experience in the hatching of many types of eggs. Just remember these are guidelines and not gospel. What works for one may not always work for another, As you gain experience you will undoubtably find things that work better for you and your machine
