Care of Hatching eggs.

April 11, 2011 - PRLog -- When thinking of hatching your own eggs there are certain steps you must take to ensure that your hatching is successful as it can be. If you are sourcing your eggs from a supplier,  be sure to use a reputable breeder as they will almost certainly not send you old eggs. The longer eggs are kept the less chance of hatching and eggs kept after 10 days are less likely to hatch than newer ones. In general good suppliers will send you the freshest eggs they can and this gives you a good success rate.
When you receive your eggs make sure you inspect the packaging to ensure there are no broken eggs, if there are then remove them immediately. Unfortunately breakages do happen through postage but in general if the eggs are packages correctly they should reach you in good condition. Once you have received your eggs be sure to leave them to stand for 24 hours before putting them in the incubator, this ensure they settle. The incubator you are using also needs to be running for 24 hours before you put the eggs in, this ensures that it is working correctly and the temperatures are consistent. Checking the incubator throughout the day is also necessary to avoid any problems such as temperature and humidity levels.
If you are using your own eggs to hatch be sure to collect them as soon as you can, this ensures they are fresh. They can then be placed in the incubator straight away as they have not gone through the postage system and will not need to settle.
The hatch rate is about 70-75% although this will be reduced slightly if you are receiving your eggs through the post and the hatching rate may drop to 60%.
There is no way of telling if your eggs are fertile or not until 7 days when you can use a device to candle them. The Candler will allow you to see if the egg has taken or not and if it hasn’t then it should be removed from the incubator.
Many eggs are lost through power failures and that is another reason why you must check the incubator regularly. It may also be a good idea to install an alarm which will notify you should there be a power cut. Eggs are also often lost through temperature changes and especially humidity levels. Humidity and temperature needs to be exact and the humidity levels will need to be higher during the last three days of hatching.
Hatching your own eggs is fun and can be successful providing you follow all guidelines carefully. Making sure you know what the temperature and humidity levels should be is really important and remember also that different eggs will differ in temperature and the duration they take to hatch.

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UK Chickens offer a wide variety of hatching eggs from good breeds, we also offer chicken equipment, advice and information.http://www.ukchickens.com