Homestead mailing list

["Karen L. Black" <karen AT plamondon.com>]

Bev writes:

> At last update, I had 21 living chicks and 3 eggs remaining in the
Incubator...There had been no sign of
hatching for any of the three eggs even though my candling record showed
development.  The other two eggs were supposed to have hatched on Monday.
So, I decided to toss the eggs.  Never one to waste anything, I made the
decision to toss the eggs into the chicken coop run.  In they went, one,
two, three...thud, thud, thud.  I sadly report that had I waited just
one more day I would have had 3 additional chicks.

For what it's worth, eggs do sometimes develop into chicks that don't hatch.
Hatching is the chick's "final exam" -- if development has been right and on
time, the chick will hatch and survive. 

When I was incubating turkey eggs last summer, I broke out the non-hatchers
to get an idea of where I was going wrong, and often they would be partially
developed or otherwise dead in shell. The number of NG eggs went down as I
became more diligent about the humidity and candling out the bad eggs at day
14.

Karen Black
Blodgett, OR