Quick Background:

I love animals.  All sorts of animals.  I’ve had cats, dogs, fish, and raised cows when I was a kid.  Obviously hubby and I needed more animals when we bought our first house on a quarter acre.

Within a few months of moving in we got our first four hens.  Luna (a leghorn), Hermione (a golden laced wyandotte), and Ginny (a Rhode Island red).  Within a few years we added four little bantams (basically mini chickens) and four more regular hens.  Last year we picked up some Jersey Giants and Golden Laced Wyandottes to start a flock of birds we could raise for eggs and meat.  We also tackled the project of building a much larger coop/shed to accommodate everyone.  That’ll be a future post because it’s still a work in progress!

For our plan to work, we needed a rooster.  Not super easy when you still live in an area that’s only semi-rural.  His name was Tiny and he was a huge Jersey Giant.  To prevent our neighbors from hating us, he spent the nights and early mornings in the brooder in our garage.  Meaning my poor husband was taking him in and out everyday, morning and night.  Tiny also tried to come after me and my mother-in-law when she was housesitting.  Then he pecked Squishy when she was getting eggs, and even tried to go after my husband.  Seemed like Tiny was running out of time.  But first, we wanted to to make sure we hatched some eggs so that we could have some birds for meat and a replacement rooster.  The only time we’d previously hatched eggs was when we had a broody hen a few years ago and got fertile eggs from someone to put under her.  We didn’t have much work to do ourselves that time.  This was largely all new to us.

The Process

After much research, I ended up choosing a Brinsea Max II Advance. I was a little leery at first since it was a new incubator and fairly pricey, but I watched a youtube video review and knew that the smaller version was popular, so I put my faith in it.  I appreciated that it seemed to be pretty “set and forget”.  It seemed to have easy humidity monitoring and I appreciated that it had automatic turning so that I wouldn’t have to manually turn the eggs multiple times a day.

Set up is so, so easy.  It’s largely pre-programmed to chickens but it’s easy to change the settings and accommodate other types of eggs.  The instruction manual even has advice for other types of eggs; everything from quails to ducks to parrots.

Within just a few hours the incubator was warmed up and I put in five eggs from our own flock and nine I had received in the mail that are supposed to be colorful layers.  After I set the eggs the only thing I had to do for the first seven days was  slightly modify the turning angle for the eggs to make sure they were turning fairly evenly and see an eye on the humidity.

Doing this in the Brinsea Maxi II Advance is super easy.  On the back of the incubator there is a little cup that’s the external fill point for water.  It pipes into the incubator and has a fill line.  Until lockdown day you just keep the water at, or just below the fill line.  This keeps water in one of the two wells  inside the incubator.  That’s it.  That’s the only thing I had to mess with for the first week.

After a week we candled the eggs.  Candling is when you shine a bright light through the egg, in the dark, to see how the egg is developing (or not developing).  We used THIS candler from Amazon.  Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of candling but there are a ton online.  At a week, it’s pretty easy to see what eggs are duds and which are doing well.  In healthy, developing eggs you’ll see lots of veins and a little black blob bouncing around.  That’s the developing chick!

If you don’t see veining or a bouncy blob at this point, your egg is probably a dud.  If you see a red ring around your egg when you candle, it’s likely a blood ring.  Blood rings occur when a chick starts to develop but then passes early on.  If you have any question on what you’re seeing, leave the eggs in for a few more days.  It’ll be clear fairly soon what’s doing well and what’s a dud.

Incubator after dud eggs were removed.

After candling, we removed four eggs, leaving us with ten.  All four were shipped eggs.  This was the gamble we took as it’s fairly accepted that a 50% hatch rate from shipped eggs is a good deal.  We broke them all open and one was totally scrambled and the other three weren’t even fertile.  In this case there was no chance we were going to get chicks from those eggs.

The second week I continued to modify the humidity and then double checked development at the 14 day mark.  Everything was still going great.

Next came lockdown.  What’s lockdown?  That’s the day you stop turning the eggs (incubator does this automatically), stop opening the incubator, up the humidity, and leave everything alone.  This gives the chicks the chance to get out safely.  Most people do lockdown on day 18, but the Brinsea is set up to do lockdown on day 19 and I went with that.

I carefully took out all the eggs (so nerve wracking) and took out the turning disc.  I replaced the turning disc with a bumpy piece of cardboard that came with the incubator (one time use).  You want something with grip in the base so that the chickeys don’t slip and side all over the place and hurt their legs.

Eggs at lockdown time

Putting the eggs back in was so stressful because my cardboard wasn’t completely flat and the eggs rolled towards each other.  I was so scared one was going to crack!  I also used the time to fill up the second of the two wells (only use one for the first 19 days) for water in the incubator and then maintained it externally for the rest of the hatch.

Then I waited.  Luckily I didn’t have to wait long.  I woke up the next morning (day 20) to find pips (the initial hole in the eggs) on six of the eggs.  I may, or may not, have run through the house yelling “WE HAVE A PIP!”.  Who am I kidding?  I definitely did that.

A PIP!

A few more pips showed up throughout the day and by days end, 8/10 had pips.

By that evening we had our first chick zipping.  This means the chick was making a line from the pip to make an area big enough to get out.  Once it was done zipping it was free pretty quickly.

What the zipping process looks like

Someone trying to reach freedom.

Wet, floppy chick.

We also took a video of the hatch that you can check out: HERE 🙂

By the next morning, 8/10 chicks were out.  Everyone was crowded but doing well.  Within an hour #9 was out and once that one was dry and fluffy, I opened the incubator for the first time and transferred them to the brooder; something I was only comfortable with because #10 hadn’t even pipped yet.  If it had pipped, I wouldn’t have opened the incubator yet because it runs the risk of basically shrink wrapping the chick in the egg as humidity suddenly drops.  No Bueno.  Luckily chicks can be in the incubator for over 24 hours without food or water if needed.

As luck would have it #10 didn’t ever hatch.  I didn’t crack the egg but from candling, it looks like it developed fully but just couldn’t make it out of the egg.  It likely wasn’t strong enough.

9/10 of our fertile eggs hatched for a 90% fertile hatch rate.  Not too shabby!  We ended up with 5 jersey giant or jersey giant x buff orpingtons, 2 Ameri-flowers, 1 olive egger, and 1 unknown from the colorful layer eggs.

They are happy campers in the brooder.  And sometimes so is Squishy!

Now, the incubator is cleaned up and finishing a 24 hour run to dry it out. I’m taking a break from hatching until the fall or next spring.  While I’d love more chickens, we’re reaching capacity 🙂

I loved our incubator and can’t recommend it highly enough.  I think it’s a great option for backyard farmers or anyone who is just looking for small hatches.