Hatching Eggs of Different Breeds at Same Time

[SmithsCoop41]

Hey Y'all,

I have a few questions regarding hatching out some eggs of different breed chickens at the same time.

This is the type of eggs I currently am incubating in the same incubator, currently on day 5.

Satin Silkie eggs, from my Fancy (Picture Posted for Reference) (First time incubating this breed)
Golden Sebright Bantam Eggs from my Little Junie Bug (Picture Posted for Reference) (First time incubating this breed)
2 Regular chicken Eggs of some sort - know the chicken it came from, but don't really know her breed, but she's a really big hen. I will post a picture of her in post. ( I call her 'Big Booty Ruby') She's also the one that usually lays the really big eggs from time to time, and that's actually the one I'm incubating of hers - a big one. Twins?


Annnyyyywhooo......I am posting this because recently I've found out that Satin Silkies usually start hatching on Day 18, which turns out to be the "lockdown" day for the regular chicken eggs, but the bantam eggs usually start hatching on Day 19 with a lockdown day on Day 16. My question is this, is it possible to be able to incubate all of these at the same time in the same incubator, or is it a no-go since they all have different hatch dates/lockdown dates, even though they are all within a few days of each other. I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to this, but I was hoping I could maybe some how pull it off. I only have one incubator right now, because the other one would never stabilize humidity level, and so I finally tossed it out. If it's not possible to incubate all in same incubator, is it possible that I could incubate the silkies and bantam eggs up until a certain day in the incubator I have them in now, and then transfer them to another incubator for hatch time? and if so, when would be the last absolute day that I could do this without killing the chicks? Y'all don't criticize me too bad, to start with I was thinking, well all of these are chicken eggs, but then realized, dang some are bantams though, so maybe they require different incubation time frames from regular size chickens.

Please tell me I won't have to choose which ones to let go, and which ones to incubate. (Not sure when I will be able to purchase another incubator).

Thanks in advance.

 

[SB907]

I have hatched silkies 4 times in my NR360 and they have always hatched towards the end of day 20 or early day 21. The last time I hatched half bantams and half standard, and they all hatched the same day, so I just do the normal day 18 lockdown. I wouldn't worry - if they do start hatching early, they can stay in the incubator for a day. I would only be concerned if the big one hatches before the others that chick may step on the little ones, but I think it's more likely they'll all hatch pretty close to each other.

 

[The Moonshiner]

If you're convinced some will hatch a couple days early set them a couple days later.
Stagger the set days so they all match on lockdown and hatch day.

 

[Yardmom]

It won't hurt your eggs to go into lock down a couple days early since you already set the eggs. One way to handle it would be to lockdown when you see the first internal pip. By the way my silkies take just as long to hatch as my standard eggs.

 

[SmithsCoop41]

I have hatched silkies 4 times in my NR360 and they have always hatched towards the end of day 20 or early day 21. The last time I hatched half bantams and half standard, and they all hatched the same day, so I just do the normal day 18 lockdown. I wouldn't worry - if they do start hatching early, they can stay in the incubator for a day. I would only be concerned if the big one hatches before the others that chick may step on the little ones, but I think it's more likely they'll all hatch pretty close to each other.

So you didn't adjust the humidity on Day 13 (Lockdown Day For Bantams) or Day 15 (Lockdown Day for Silkies), you just kept humidity around 45-55/60 until lockdown day for standard chicken eggs (Day 18)? I'm scared that if I adjust the humidity, say, for the bantams on day #13, that will cause the silkies and standard chicken eggs hatch to be messed up and possibly kill the unhatched chicks......

 

[SmithsCoop41]

So you didn't adjust the humidity on Day 13 (Lockdown Day For Bantams) or Day 15 (Lockdown Day for Silkies), you just kept humidity around 45-55/60 until lockdown day for standard chicken eggs (Day 18)? I'm scared that if I adjust the humidity, say, for the bantams on day #13, that will cause the silkies and standard chicken eggs hatch to be messed up and possibly kill the unhatched chicks......

I'm scared that if the humidity is off for whatever breed, say I decide to do lockdown on Day #15 which would be the Silkies' lockdown day, and the bantams have passed their standard lockdown day (Day#13), that's not gonna mess up the bantams if they're ready to hatch but can't because the humidity is not increased to allow for the eggs to soften up for hatch? The shell needs to be soft in order for the chicks to pip through. If the humidity isn't right then the bantams won't be able to break through.

 

[SmithsCoop41]

If you're convinced some will hatch a couple days early set them a couple days later.
Stagger the set days so they all match on lockdown and hatch day.

Okay, at the chance of sounding completely crazy....what exactly are you talking about "staggering"? I've heard of that the other day when my MIL mentioned it, when I was talking about the hatch dates and all. However, I do not know what that means or how it is done....HELP??!!!

 

[SmithsCoop41]

If you're convinced some will hatch a couple days early set them a couple days later.
Stagger the set days so they all match on lockdown and hatch day.

Ok, I just looked it up, and are you talking about when you initially put the eggs in the incubator? for example: putting 10 bantam eggs in the morning time, then 10 silkie eggs in at night, then 10 regular chicken eggs in the next morning? that way the hatch dates/times could possibly be at different times? Was that what you meant? My concern was mostly what to do about the humidity concerning the different hatch dates and lockdown dates for each individual breed....

 

[fluffycrow]

Staggering is setting eggs in the incubator on different dates. That way you can set the eggs and have them all hatch at the same time, and have the same lockdown date, if you're really anxious about setting them on the same day

 

[ChickenCanoe]

You are right, they are all chicken eggs and it isn't necessarily the breed so much as the size of the egg. The breed notorious for early hatching is the Serama because they are so tiny at about 16 grams. Sebrights and silkies could be early as well. One reason is that when setting, the smaller the egg, the sooner the intside comes up to temperature. Sometimes, depending on the location of the egg in the incubator it can affect timing. If a small egg is in a hotter part of the incubator, it will be earlier. Even forced air incubators can have hotter and cooler spots. The best thing to do is change the location of all eggs in the incubator every few days.

What I really want you to do is stop stressing about the humidity. Let's simplify things for you. A mother hen, usually has good success rates. She doesn't own a hygrometer and she can't control changes in ambient humidity. If she is witnessing a thunderstorm, she is exposed to 90+% humidity. If it is arid, she could have ambient humidity around 20%. So how does she do it? First, except for frequent turning, she sits tight containing the humidity from all moisture loss. She also achieves an average humidity over the course of incubation. You should be aiming for the same thing.
You don't have to toss out an incubator that seems to have unsteady humidity as long as temperature control is good, even as a backup an incubator is a valuable thing to have on hand.
Until I finally got some extremely accurate hygrometers, I didn't even check humidity. Much more important than humidity at any one point during incubation is the egg weight loss throughout incubation. That is all that really matters. During the first 18 days of incubating chicken eggs, you are trying to achieve 11-13% weight loss. So regardless of egg size, breed or even species, you want to stay around 0.03% weight loss per day. I'm not sure if I did the math correctly but I think that comes out to about a 1.25 gram weight loss per day with a 40 gram egg - which is about what you have I imagine. What I did for many years was to use a pocket gram scale and weigh before setting and at weekly intervals with some water in the incubator. At week one, If they haven't lost enough weight, let it dry out. If they lost too much, add water and surface area. Surface area affects humidity, not volume.
If you have a larger scale, you can weigh a whole carton or flat of eggs and calculate the weight loss of the lot. However, some of the larger kitchen scales are notoriously inaccurate. Weigh the same egg 3 times in a row, if the scale shows the same reading each time, you are good to go.
This is a much more accurate way to increase success rate than constantly measuring humidity.
Then all you have to do at lockdown is to raise the humidity as much as you can unless you have condensation on the window, in which case you can lower it.
When hatching is imminent, a mother hen sits tight and doesn't move to retain humidity.

Lock down day is a made up number. You don't even have to worry about turning the last week so theoretically you can lock down any day the last week. That is because the first 10 days is the most critical for turning and you should turn as much as possible then. By the end of 2 weeks, the extra embryonic membranes (allantois, chorion and amniotic) which feed the embryo are well formed.