There isn’t a single person who doesn’t say “aww” when they see a baby chick. (Correction: My husband doesn’t say “aww,” but I’m sure deep down in that chicken unloving soul of his, he feels it?!)

When I purchased my first chicks, I assumed they would grow up and live forever.

Not the case.

My first two were eaten by some critter that was killing for fun and not for food.  Another was squished when a goat knocked over a pallet and it landed on the chicken. One made the flight of death over the coop fence and into dog territory. My dogs do not willingly kill, but they will play chase until it doesn’t play chase anymore. Then of course my rooster turned on the husband, and then me…and after we had our first stand off at the coop door, he was the winner, winner of chicken dinner.

Shortly thereafter, I came to the conclusion that raising my own chicks may be worth it. In fact, it seemed brilliant and easy. I would buy an incubator, put the eggs in and watch them hatch!

TOTALLY not the case.

Did you know that being at an altitude of 6000 feet is an immediate reduction in your hatch rate? Yeah, I found that out after purchasing the unit. (Those of you at sea level are lucky ducks!)  Did you know that literally the stars have to be aligned with the perfect temperature, humidity and hourly angle of the egg …to even hatch a chick? Me either?! HOW this happens underneath a hen that sits there for 21 days is beyond me…full proof that there is a God and miracles do happen. It’s a miracle, and you can’t recreate a miracle in a surrogate situation so I found out. Well you kind of can, but it isn’t pretty.

I started by reading every article and blog on the internet in regards to incubation.  I even watched a few video tutorials.  I felt confident enough that I could go ahead and start the process.

Day 1 – I placed the eggs in the incubator on the egg turner (pointy side down), filled the water canals at the bottom (for humidity), put the lid on and set the temp at roughly 100. (Oddly enough the incubator instructions were not even this detailed…which is silly because here we are attempting to create LIFE.)

Days 2 to 10– Nothing too exciting happens during this period.  The eggs are now in the middle of creating life and are not to be bothered.  Occasionally, you do have to fill the water canal though…without opening the incubator. Yes, I noticed the same problem…you have to be GOD to make water appear without opening the lid (at least in the one I bought).  Its helpful to get creative at times like these.  For those wondering, I used a straw, syringe, and turkey baster to get water in there.

Days 11-17- Somewhere in this stretch I picked a day to examine the eggs.  Granted, you want to do this in as a little time as possible, but the idea is to shine a bright light into the egg to see if you can see signs of a chick developing. Some of these signs are:

• Blood vessels:  Little healthy red veins will be seen running through the egg
• Air sac:  The air sac should be in the larger end of the egg.  An air sac on the side or partially in place is no good for the chick.
• Movement:  Yes, depending how far along you can see movement.
• Here is a little video of the good stuff:  IMG_1392

Signs that you do NOT want to see are:

• No blood vessels
• Blood ring:  This is a single dark ring that is very apparent usually and means the chick died but the blood vessels are absorbing together.
• Dark goo:  This can be mistaken for a live chick but usually is a moving blob of goo that never changes characteristics after.
• No movement:  Unfortunately, this sometimes happens in the last day before hatching and the chick never makes it to hatch day.

Day 18 – Any remaining eggs that had survived the first 18 days of miracles were placed on the wire floor of the incubator. They no longer have to be turned by the egg turner.  This period is also known as “Lock Down”. At this point, nothing is moved or touched or disturbed until hatching.

Day 21 – Hatch day, if you are me…fast forward to Day 23.

• **Remember setting the temperature on day one?  It’s important to have a back up thermometer to check the thermostat that is in the unit.  Apparently if your temp is off by even a degree, it will effect the eggs.  Mine was about 2 degrees too low which made for late eggs…which comes with its own problems.

Day 23 – Hatch day, much too late. Regardless, its hatch day. You hear some chirping and you begin the obsession of never leaving the incubator. You now fixate your eyes (until they start twitching) on the eggs inside. A wiggle of the egg is super exciting to watch and you might as well stay there another 5 hours to hopefully witness another wiggle. Better yet, a pip (or new hole) in the egg is worth not leaving the incubator to even go to the bathroom. So at this point, set up camp and arrange for your food to be brought in by your children and husband.  At least that is what I did.

If you are a lucky person, these little chicks will hatch out all on their own and there will be wet little ugly babies flopping all over. If you are like me, get the cameras rolling because the next season of ER is about to be filmed.

Here is a baby that had just pipped…

And then about an hour later…

(The below scenario is in no way how something should be done, I was winging it, so don’t use this for advice…unless of course you are winging it like me!)

These chicks were late and were having difficulties coming out. I got them this far in the process and had already witnessed one give up and die. (Believe it or not, this happens in nature and its a process of survival of the fittest.  Not all eggs are meant to survive but when you have put as much time and effort into it as I had, I was willing to do anything to help.)  It was now time to intervene. I quickly made a makeshift ER on my laundry room counter.  I studied up in about 30 seconds, made sure my ‘Chicken Guru’ was on the line, and opened up the operating room.

To prepare myself, I quickly did an ‘eggtopsy’ of the chick that had died in the egg and dissected it to familiarize myself with what I was getting into.  Definitely wasn’t as gory as I had thought it was going to be, but was invaluable for educational purposes.

Onto the eggs that were still viable as the chicks had made their first hole but seemed uninterested in completing the journey.  Flake by flake I was instructed to flip off pieces of shell. You can only work at one end of the egg (the top portion with the air sac) and one wrong move can cause a bleed out.  Lest I forget, this is done with tweezers.  (Yep.)

While opening the egg above the air sac, you hope to find a little beak…which would be the chick attempting to breath.

That little chirp will give you permission to keep going. (If you don’t see a beak, you can still keep going but it may be worth shining a light on the egg in the dark to see the placement of the chick.  The chick may have been upside down and broken through the wrong end…which it most likely will not survive.)  You then peel the thin film off that forms a sac around the chick. You can only peel where there are no blood vessels and the idea is to keep it off the beak so it won’t cause suffocation.

Next is to peel the sac over the head. At this point, you have done all you can do in about 20 seconds and have to put the egg back in the incubator to see if the chick will do the rest of the work.

Here is a little guy that made it out after I had just helped him…

Now, multiply this by 4. Yes, I performed chick extraction surgery four times.

After the fourth, and as they started to dry off, I noticed that some of them had a crooked foot or possibly what they call splay leg.  Unfortunately this was all due to the inconsistencies of the incubator.  While not ideal, here is a post about how to deal with leg issues in chicks.

(The CHICK-U)

In the end, I came to appreciate the natural process of a hen setting her own little batch of eggs.  Taking out the natural course of mothering was way more responsibility than I had thought.  So while this was very educational, I came to the conclusion that the baby chicks were best left to the hens to raise them…or I needed to invest in a better product.

**Below are the surviving babies who were quickly adopted by one of my hens that desperately wanted to be a momma.  It was the cutest thing to watch her act shocked when she thought one of her eggs had hatched!

Video of baby Chicks!