About three weeks ago I got a new incubator. I'm planning on doing some hatching in the spring. The incubator, a hova-bator 1588, holds 42 eggs, but I thought I'd give it a little test run with 8 eggs. Because I have no rooster there would be no point in using eggs from my hens, so I headed over to Codman farm where I volunteer, and collected the 8 eggs you see below. They are all shapes, sizes and colors and I think they are a photogenic bunch of eggs. I discovered that one was cracked a bit at the pointy end. All of them went into the incubator anyway.
Three weeks later 6 of them hatched, including the cracked one. Below you can see a chick emerging from an egg. This is actually the egg that was cracked. I really didn't think it would make it, because early on it appeared that the egg leaked a very tiny bit. I can only assume that the leak got plugged very soon and things progressed. I had heard of repairing cracked eggs with wax or clear nail polish, but I decided to just let it be and see what happened.
Below you can see the 6 chicks that hatched. The yellow one in the back corner is the one from the cracked egg. The other egg that I wondered about was the very small egg. It did hatch a small chick. I think it may be a bantam and is kind of cute with feathered legs.
Below is a close-up of the cracked egg after I took it out to candle. It was then that I discovered that it was developing so back in it went. After the hatch was over,I checked the two eggs that didn't hatch. One was not fertile and one had stopped developing after about 8 days. I'm quite happy with the new incubator and look forward to hatching more in the spring.
Three weeks later 6 of them hatched, including the cracked one. Below you can see a chick emerging from an egg. This is actually the egg that was cracked. I really didn't think it would make it, because early on it appeared that the egg leaked a very tiny bit. I can only assume that the leak got plugged very soon and things progressed. I had heard of repairing cracked eggs with wax or clear nail polish, but I decided to just let it be and see what happened.
Below you can see the 6 chicks that hatched. The yellow one in the back corner is the one from the cracked egg. The other egg that I wondered about was the very small egg. It did hatch a small chick. I think it may be a bantam and is kind of cute with feathered legs.
Below is a close-up of the cracked egg after I took it out to candle. It was then that I discovered that it was developing so back in it went. After the hatch was over,I checked the two eggs that didn't hatch. One was not fertile and one had stopped developing after about 8 days. I'm quite happy with the new incubator and look forward to hatching more in the spring.
Just dicovered your Blog from Palazzo Rospo and chicken research.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post about the Incubator and how you decided to give even the cracked egg a chance. It's reassuring to know that "Life Finds A Way"!