All of the books and websites agree that you get your best chicks by the end of day 21, so even though I'll let the rest of the eggs sit in the incubator for another day or two, I want to do my hatching analysis with just the chicks hatched by Tuesday afternoon.  At that time, there were five happy chicks snuggled under the brooder, two aided and ailing chicks in the first aid incubator (more on them tomorrow), one chick just hatched in the big incubator, and two pipped eggs.

Of the six chicks that hatched on their own, five were Cuckoo Marans and only one was a homegrown egg.  Keep in mind that the Cuckoo Marans were jiggled around by the post office and had to wait a whole week from laying before going in the incubator, a combination of factors that often reduces hatch rates.  So why did they do so much better?

Nine of the 24 eggs I started with were from our four year old hens because I was hoping to pass on their foraging genes, but I've since read that any hen older than two years is going to produce eggs with limited viability.  Even the eggs from our "young" Golden Comet are a bit suspect since she's three years old.  Of these geriatric eggs, one hatched unaided just at the end of day 21, I helped one out, and one is a late pipper.  For the sake of comparison, our mail order Cuckoo Marans self-hatched 42% of their eggs by the end of day 21, I helped one chick out of the shell, and one more is a late pipper.  Clearly, age of the hen matters.

As a side note, next time I'll be sure to plan my hatch for the weekend.  My ability to focus on work while chicks are struggling out of their shells over my right shoulder is pretty much nill.  Good thing my boss is nice!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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