Incubation

We have 41 eggs "cooking" in our incubator. Not all will be for us... my dad wants some and G's cousin wants some. Also, not every egg will hatch; a 75% hatch rate is typical. One website says it can be as low as 30% for beginners, 50% for intermediate experience, and 80% for experts. Not sure where I fall. 🤔 I incubated eggs with my dad as a kid (don't recall the hatch rate) and did it once with my class (0% hatch rate 😅 due to faulty temperature gauges), so I have some experience. Will it be enough for 75%??

We borrowed two incubators from my dad and plugged them in a day before setting the eggs. This was to make sure they could hold the steady temperature chicks need to grow.

Unfortunately, both did not meet the requirements. One looked like it would be okay but then it spiked a temperature way too hot; the other held a temperature lower than necessary. So we bought a new one. We went to three different stores before we found an incubator. I guess with the price of chicken eggs these days, everyone is hatching their own chicks! 

We didn't have room in our house for the incubator, and our garage is not insulated, so we set the incubator up in my in-law's heated garage so that it would be in a location with a constant temperature (their cars aren't going in and out much these days).

Next came choosing the eggs to incubate. My dad sent three dozen which meant that seven wouldn't go in. A chicken care book I read said to pick eggs that are less porous and round not pointy for best success. 

We candled the eggs to check for porosity and removed the most porous. Those eggs will loose moisture more rapidly. You want eggs to loose moisture, but at the same rate. 

After that we selected for roundness (makes it easier for the chick to hatch and something about the air pocket too). Our third selection was shell color. We want a variety of breeds, so we need a variety of shell colors. 

Finally, we put the eggs in, pointy side down. Our incubator has an egg rotator, so we don't need to do that by hand. 

It also has a slot to insert water to increase humidity. We want 30-40% in the beginning and will increase/decrease as we candle and check the air pocket size. At the end, it will be much higher, in the 60-80% range.