Monday, June 20, 2016

Lockdown!!

Y'all probably don't know what that is. Well, some of you might. On the the details!!

So when incubating eggs you have to turn them. Right? Right. and we do this because if we don't then the yolk will stick to the side of the egg and you will get deformed chicks. That is if they survive. BUT, if you keep turning them all the way until the end of incubation then the chicks, who are trying to get in the right position to hatch, get moved all around through the egg and have to keep on readjusting themselves. This can wear the chick out and it will not have enough strength to break out and is trapped inside the shell, alive. And so to prevent this we have to stop turning them on about day 18(yesterday).

Humidity. Humidity is just a measurement of how wet the air is. 100% is the max(The air can't hold any more) and 0% is the lowest(No water in the air). So, everybody has their own opinions on what the humidity should be at each of the different stages of incubation. However one thing that everybody seams to agree on is that the humidity needs to be between 50% and 80% for when they're hatching. So the reason for this is because if the humidity is too low than the egg will more or less dry out and the membrane will shrink wrap the chick and it will be stuck inside the shell, alive. However, if the humidity is too high then the chick will drowned inside the egg. So, regardless of what humidity you decide on for most of the incubation, at lockdown you need to have it about this humidity.

Another thing that you need to do for lockdown is to, well, 'lock down'. Don't open the incubator for any reason at all. Because if a chick is just starting to pip(The first step to hatching) it is used to 99.7 degrees and if you open the lid all the heat escapes and it takes a while to warm back up and the chick may die from shock because of the change of temperature. So you need to leave the lid on.

Next you want to put paper towels inside the incubator all over the floor so that when the chicks hatch they don't have their feet going through the wires and/or(Depending on your incubator) so that they can have the traction that they need to move around and warm up.

So, I made all of these changes yesterday, Sunday, the 18th day of incubation. So they should be hatching on Wednesday but that depends on the incubation temperature. If the temp is slightly low then it might be another day but if it's a little high than it could be earlier. My temp throughout incubation has been just under the recommended 99.7 so they might be a little late.

So, I'l definitely do a picture post when they hatch which should be later this week. All of this information is just from what I have learned off of the internet in the past month of research. So, if anybody has any tips, tricks, or ideas please let me know in the comments.

Thanks for checkin' out my blog,

Seeya

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