Hatching Chicks in an Incubator

One of the most special experiences for me so far on the farm has been hatching chicks in the incubator. As just a disclaimer, this is not a How To, nor am I an expert in any way, shape or form in chicken hatching. This is just my experience and delight in the process.

How it Started:

One of the four fat hens we bought at the flea market became broody not long after we got her. We kept removing the eggs hoping she would change her ways. As time went on, her broodiness went to the next level! Not only did she want to sit on her eggs all day, she wanted no part in us trying to take the eggs out. We wore welding gloves to shield our hands and arms from her pecks! Finally, I gave in and just let her sit.

Finding Babies:

One weekend, Evan’s parents came to visit. His mom checked the hen house and said our mean hen was off the nest, and she left 8 eggs sitting in her box. The next morning, I checked on the chickens and again found the hen off the nest. This time, only 5 eggs were left with one broken egg in the box. I grabbed two of the leftover eggs and candled them. They looked viable, so I stuck them in the incubator with my guinea egg experiment. Then, I had a eureka/smack myself in the face moment. I thought Momma Hen broke one of her eggs and quit setting. Instead, I ran back out to the coop, scooted Momma hen over and found 2 baby chicks!!!

What to do with the other eggs?

As I said, she left 5 eggs in the nest when she ultimately jumped down to care for her two new babies. Two of the eggs were already in the incubator from earlier that morning. I took the remaining 3 eggs, momma hen and the babies and put them in the brooder house. You can read about this in our weekly recap here.

Happy Family.

My Whoops Moment

I am 100% new at farming/homestead/chickens. Most of my current knowledge comes from Mr Google Search. Also, a good portion comes from our great neighbors who are also raising chicks. After about a week, I looked in on momma hen in the brooder house. She was on a rampage. I found her eating one of her 3 remaining eggs, and she kicked the other two out of the nest. I wrongly assumed that meant the other two eggs were not viable. Sadly, one of the eggs still held a underdeveloped baby chick. I am not sure why the momma no longer wanted them, but unfortunately that was the end of the 3 eggs in her nest.

What about the other 2 eggs in the incubator?

Evan did not like having the incubator running in the house, especially when we were not home. He kept asking me to remove all of the eggs, but I didn’t want to have a second whoops. I candled the remaining eggs leading to the end of my guinea egg experiment and kept the last 2 eggs from the hen house. As a side note, our guineas keep making nests, laying eggs then sitting on them. Something comes along and eats most of the eggs, and we are worried for the guineas safety if they remain outside all night on the nest. We are not sure if we have two female guineas or a male and female. I put 4 eggs in the incubator, but we never hatched any babies.

Progress

One morning, almost 2 weeks after the first 2 chicks hatched, I checked my two incubator eggs before work. To my surprise and delight, one egg had pipped! Then, IT WIGGLED!!! Evan immediately shushed me, but I think he was secretly excited too. 😉 I never researched far enough into the process to know the time line for hatching. When I returned home from work, the egg looked the same as the morning. As the evening progressed, we noticed lots of movement and a small increase in the size of the crack. Two hours after I last checked the egg, we found a baby!! I was so excited to see the new baby but a little sad I missed the actual hatching.

The top egg has the small pip.

Taken from the opposite window, the egg now has more cracks!

Our first incubator baby!

Egg Watch

I woke up the next morning excited the baby made it through the night, AND the second egg pipped! I renamed Friday: EGG WATCH DAY. Luckily, I was off work, and watching podium training for US Classic, so I was near the incubator all day.

Baby two Pipped (0659)

The egg did not change much between when I woke up and early afternoon, but you could tell the baby was working. The egg would just sit there and wiggle! The first baby was very curious and kept coming up and lightly pecking at the egg.

So photogenic already (baby1)

One of my last checks, I thought I saw the little beak. I took up shop on the kitchen counter which is where Evan found me when he got home from work. The egg still just had the small crack in the side. I thought I still had plenty of time, so I went out side and set up a small baby pen with a light and placed it in the bathroom. When I came back inside, I saw the beak again! From this point, the hatching went fairly quickly. The first baby became VERY interested by pecking at the hole in the egg.

520pm

The brooder I set up.

Hatching Chicks:

I am So happy I was able to catch this happen as well as get a video of it to share with y’all! Baby One tried to roll the egg out of view of my phone several times. Some of the video gets a little blurry because I took the video through the window on the incubator. The last video shows the baby fully coming out of the egg. I wanted to include the others in case someone wanted to see the entire process!

The whole process was amazing to watch. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to check out our little piece of the internet!

PS

A few pictures of the babies.

Babies moved outside

Happy Weekend

<3

Ali

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