Chicks!

They’re here! We started incubating on the 5th March at 8pm. You should ignore the first eight hours as the eggs need to reach the correct internal temperature before cell growth begins, so I counted from the early hours of the 6th. This meant we were due on Thursday 27th, early in the morning, given the 21 days incubation period needed.

So nineteen days in we set up the Brinsea Polyhatch, a 42 egg still air incubator we were going to use only for hatching. We separated the Derbyshire Redcaps and Light Sussex from the random banties, as bantams can be a bit early. The Polyhatch needed a higher temperature, 39.2 Celsius, as the thermometer was about an inch above the top of the eggs, and being still air the heat wasn’t moved around evenly. We filled both water trays to get the humidity up – an important thing for the last two days as it helps prevent the chick from getting stuck to the inside of the egg shell. We also plugged two of the ventilation holes in the lid, using kitchen towel.

Imagine our surprise then when on day nineteen I did my last check of the temperature before bedtime at 10pm, and heard a loud tweet from the Polyhatch! Looking back at me was the littlest Redcap you’ve ever seen – a bemused look on its face, surrounded by oval monoliths, like some curved version of 2001 Space Oddysey’s intro sequence. The morning after we had a Light Sussex join him (or her), and then the Bantam’s also started in the Octagon 20 Eco. By the end of day 21 we had all but two eggs hatched. The remaining two did hatch eventually, but both chicks later died – one Light Sussex and one Redcap. The Redcap had pipped three days perviously, but had failed to break the membrane beneath the shell. We helped it at the end by making a small hole in the membrane, and it managed to struggle out but was too weak to carry on. The Light Sussex had a bent leg, indicating that it had become stuck in the shell in an odd position. It also couldn’t turn itself to  break the egg shell further than the original pipping, and although we helped it out and put a splint on its foot (using a pipecleaner and micropore tape), it too failed to drink or eat.

So of the 26 eggs we set, two Redcaps and one bantam were infertile and removed before the hatching began. Of the 23 left, 21 hatched successfully – not bad for beginners 🙂