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Saturday 12 March 2016

Chick Update!

3 days to go!!

Today I stop turning them in their incubator. This is so that they have a chance to orient themselves in their eggs so that they are in the correct position for hatching. If they are in the wrong position, they may not break out into the air sack, and drown. We don't want this, so we give them a couple of days to sort themselves out.

We also need to increase the humidity inside the incubator. The egg has an inner membrane which is very soft and flexible which the chick needs to break through. I am sure you have seen it at some point when cooking eggs, that membrane you can peel away. Have you seen it once the egg has been open for a couple of hours? This membrane goes really tough and hard to break. We increase the humidity to stop it going tough. A chick can take up to 24 hours to hatch from its egg, and if that membrane goes hard, then it can be fatal for the chick. So we need a little extra moisture in the air.

My incubator is a Brinsea mini eco.  Its a basic model, but it has been such a good incubator.  It holds a temperature really steady, I only ever have to adjust it during the setting up stage.



The water pot on the mini eco is divided into 2 halves. During the first phase of incubation (up until now) we filled half of the pot. This is so that the air sac in the egg could develop properly while still keeping the air humid and warm. Now we need to fill both sides to make the humidity rise for hatching.

Im upgrading the adult chickens living area at the moment (details to come in another post!), but as soon as i am done with that i will be setting up the brooder for when these little ones hatch. Not long now!

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