Last 3 days before hatching

[Ashley & Donna Dame]

I am a bit bewildered on the whole hatching subject. In nature a chicken hatches her babies. I know she turns the eggs on a regular basis and her body heat keeps them warm. Heck I even get that with her sitting on them it creates humidity. My question is how does the chicken turn up her humidity the last few days before the eggs hatch. Also if a chicken only lays one egg a day, and say she has one under her due to hatch in 3 days and some not due to hatch for 8 days, then wouldn't those eggs require different humidity and how does she do this? Can someone clarify this because we have 9 eggs in the incubator, one is from 11/07/17 and they go up to the 12th.

 

[Pyxis]

A chicken doesn't start sitting until she has all the eggs she's going to hatch, to answer your second question. She doesn't start sitting and then add an egg every day like parrots do. Once she starts sitting, that's it, no more eggs. So they all hatch at the same time.

As for your humidity question, the chicks hatching actually raise the humidity. As they pip externally, moisture is released from the egg, is trapped under the hen, and humidity rises. We just add water and increase humidity beforehand because incubators are large enough that the moisture released by pipping chicks isn't enough to get the humidity in that large space high enough.

 

[Bryam]

Well said Pyxis!☺

 

[Pyxis]

I just realized you said in your post that you have a staggered hatch. You shouldn't do that, because of the issues you are now running into with humidity. In the future, you need to set them all at the same time.

For this hatch, you're just going to need to increase the humidity for the ones that are hatching and hope it doesn't negatively impact the ones that aren't hatching too much. I would wait until your first internal pip to increase the humidity.

Well said Pyxis!☺

Thank you

 

[Ashley & Donna Dame]

Thanks for your response. This is all new to us. It was so exciting to start getting eggs. We realized that 8 if the 9 weren't doing anything. So we removed them. The last one after candling has a chick. So we know now that we have to hold eggs so they start incubation at the same time.