# Different way of incubating



## Cockadoodledoo (Jan 28, 2016)

I read on another forum of a lady who incubated differently and it really made a lot of sense to me.

This person collect fertile eggs daily and popped them in the incubator. So there were eggs of all schedules in the incubator at any one time. She would turn the eggs when she added new ones and I'm assuming that there were no auto turners because the nature of her set up. I'm sure she marked them with a date so she could easily identify those to toss. So, she had eggs hatching daily. She had luck with constant humidity at 50% during the entire incubation.

This just made sense. I hear of so many people wasting eggs during one week or another while waiting for eggs to get out of the incubator because the eggs would be too old. Even if the hatch rate was slightly less due to a lower humidity...there would be no egg wasting during other weeks. 

Just wanted to get everyone's thoughts on this!


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## Nm156 (May 16, 2015)

I think that if one was hatching that many eggs they should get a couple of other incubators.


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## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

What she is doing is called a staggered hatch. She should have mentioned that there was a hatcher that the eggs within three days of hatching were moved to. 

The daily collection thing just doesn't quite fit to me. There is absolutely nothing wrong collecting eggs for an entire week before setting them. Her method actually increased the work she had to do a ton.


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## Cockadoodledoo (Jan 28, 2016)

She left them all in the incubator through the entire process. I don't think she was doing that many eggs. Just a few a day...because she mentioned that thee was always a chicken or two hatching every day.


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## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

Having hatched quite a few of my own her method just is way more work than necessary. There is a reason that the humidity is raised at the end of the process, if she is not doing that my guess is peeps are having a harder time hatching.

Then there's that whole, always having peeps very staggered in age. The newest need to be shown how to survive, the oldest have to be moved from the youngest because they'll overrun them.


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## Cockadoodledoo (Jan 28, 2016)

Here is the post...


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## Cockadoodledoo (Jan 28, 2016)

I'd be interested to see how long she has done it and what her hatch rate is.


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## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

Well, I can tell you she is dead wrong about the hen not being able to raise the humidity when hatch day grows closer. It's very noticeable how much the underside of a brooding hen changes from having just gone broody and when she knows it's time for peeps to hatch.

You mean she hasn't mentioned her success rate?


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## Nm156 (May 16, 2015)

Where is that post from?


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## Cockadoodledoo (Jan 28, 2016)

I know human mama's can change the temperature of the chest/breast when the baby is skin to skin....so why wouldn't hen be able to make changes as well, in response to her chicks, right!?


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## Cockadoodledoo (Jan 28, 2016)

The post was from backyard chickens from 2012. Old post, old contributor


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## Cockadoodledoo (Jan 28, 2016)

I'd almost bet that if timing was that big of an issue with your inccubator, you would be better off incubating 3 week old eggs then doing it her way.


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## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

heididmitchell said:


> I know human mama's can change the temperature of the chest/breast when the baby is skin to skin....so why wouldn't hen be able to make changes as well, in response to her chicks, right!?


Exactly, when I would check to see if any peeps had hatched yet the underside of the broody was almost wet and very warm.


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## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

heididmitchell said:


> I'd almost bet that if timing was that big of an issue with your inccubator, you would be better off incubating 3 week old eggs then doing it her way.


Right. I know three week old eggs will hatch. Been there done that. And then I would have peeps that were all in the same growth phase.


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## WeeLittleChicken (Aug 31, 2012)

Staggered hatching is a pain... Been there, done that, and currently have a somewhat staggered hatch going on now (already had a batch in the incubator when the 2 dozen eggs I reserved last fall came in the mail... whelp! Might as well throw some more in!) Mostly it's just a pain keeping track of everything -- are these eggs duds or just not incubated long enough? What humidity do you set it at if you're going to have hatching going on for more than a day or two? Though I must say the Seramas did *really* well with ungodly high humidity through the whole incubation. Just a matter of preference I guess but I won't be doing it again unless by necessity.


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## Cockadoodledoo (Jan 28, 2016)

I kinda like knowing what's going on and who's at what place in development. That would drive me NUTS!!


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