Incubating Chicken Eggs
By: Megan Benson
Tags: Urban Farming, Farm, Farming, Incubator, Side Hustle

Incubating Chicken Eggs

It’s all in the details. It takes a lot more than placing an egg in an incubator and hoping for a chicken to hatch in 21 days for a successful hatch. Megan Benson Dec 10, 2020·6 min read

Are you ready to hatch?

Incubator has been up and running for 72 hours with no temperature or humidity issues

You have a brooder ready or plan to have one ready. I like the Hatching Time 15 inch Brooder.

Supplies on hand including Nutri-drench

You’ve checked your eggs (own flock) for fertility?

Start day

Day 0 is the day I like to call start day. This is when you have your fertilized eggs, and they’re ready to go into your incubator.

This means you have tested your incubator to monitor the temperatures and humidity. I incubate and hatch at 50% to 55% humidity. I personally use the GQF Sportsman 1502 incubator and GQF 1550 Hatcher.

All eggs should go pointed side down — air sac on top. If your unsure, candle your egg to ensure the air sac is on top. This is critical to your hatch. If you don’t need to candle your eggs on starting day don’t, you run the risk of damaging the fragile embryonic system.

If you have an incubator that the eggs lay flat in, that’s fine as well just lay them down and the automatic turner will do its magic.

If you are manually turning a great suggestion would be to number the sides 1 -2- 3- 4 so that you know you have turned the eggs properly. 4 turns a day is enough to hatch eggs.

Day 1–5 for shipped eggs

Check your eggs to ensure the air sac is attached and in position, if they are loose, saddled or detached you will want to handle these different. Place eggs in your incubator pointed side down, and do not turn for the first 1–5 days. (this is my personal opinion, others start turning day 1)

If you have no air sac issues, place in the incubator like normal and turn the auto turner on after 72 hours in the incubator.

Day 1–7 for non-shipped eggs

Place eggs in your incubator and turn your automatic egg turner on.

(If you don’t own an automatic egg turner you should be rotating them every hour. It’s recommended that you mark the egg to ensure you’re fully rotating it).

Day 7

Candling day! This is the most egg-citing day to me! You will want to check those shipped eggs to see how your babies are growing. You should see spider veins through the egg.

You’ll want to start the shipped eggs that weren’t being turned this day too. I like to mark my eggs for any air sac issues, so I can check on day 18 before lockdown on day 18.

If your not 100% sure how the egg is developing mark the egg and recheck it on day 10.

Day 10

At Day 10 re-candle those you’ve marked as possibly not being viable and, if they still show no signs of developing take them out of the incubator and toss them. You’ll see a non-viable egg below with zero movement and the veins aren’t visible.

Day 18

Candle all eggs to confirm life inside and set them in the incubator. This is the crucial time in your hatch, this is what you’ve been waiting for. Lockdown is the time that you place the egg in the incubator and DO NOT open it until your eggs have all hatched. No matter how temping, DO NOT open your incubator. See reasons for emergency opening below.

Pro tip — use non-slip cabinet liner in your incubator for easy clean up.

Day 18 for eggs with air cell issues

This is not required this is my opinion and how I have seen the best results with hatching.

I take an egg carton and do what I call an upright hatch. This means you cut a hole in the bottom of your egg carton in each egg slot, and place the eggs in the carton pointed side down to hatch. This allows a better chance for those eggs with air sac issues. I typically only hatch this way for shipped eggs.