Of all the memorable experiences you can share with your kids at home, I’d say incubating an egg and watching a baby chicken hatch provides the most fun per dollar by far. We received our fertilized egg from a friend for free (because chicken people are awesome), and we built a styrofoam incubator with about $30 worth of supplies from Walmart. The single chick we hatched was well worth the time and money we put in, but the whole setup is still right here, ready to use again this year. Here’s what I wish I’d known sooner.
Setting up the Incubator
Chicks develop in their eggs for 21 days on average before hatching. During that time, they need to be kept at a temperature between 97 and 102°F, as close to 99.5 degrees as possible. Our egg got down to the low 70’s for hours at a time while it was under our broody hen and still hatched a healthy chick, so don’t panic if you lose power or your temps get too low. Of course, you’ll end up cooking your egg if the temp gets too high, so I’d always err on the side of cooler temperatures.
The humidity in your incubator should stay between 40 and 50% for the first 18 days, which should be fairly easy. The humidity of the room you’re setting up in probably falls within that range, or very close to it.
You’ll have to turn your eggs over at least four times a day from day 1 to day 17. Hens do this in their nests, so that the yolk stays centered in the egg, and the embryo doesn’t become fatally stuck to the shell membrane. That’s a major downside of homemade incubators. Many store bought models include an automatic turner.
On the 18th day, you’ll need to raise the humidity to between 65 and 75% to keep the membrane from sticking to (shrink-wrapping) your chicks as they begin to hatch. This can be tricky, depending on the type of incubator you have. We inserted a wet sponge and kept the lid on ours to raise the humidity, and opened the lid just a crack to lower it until we were in the desired range. You’ll also need to stop turning the egg at that point, and remove the automatic turner if you have one.
Choosing Eggs to Incubate
When pullets (young hens) first begin to lay, their eggs are smaller than average, and the shells are harder. They’ll invest the same percentage of their diet’s calcium to egg shells throughout their laying lives, but as the eggs gradually get bigger, the shells will become easier to crack. Incubating an egg from a very young hen will lower your chances of a successful hatch, because the chick has less room to grow and, even if it does grow successfully, it may not have the strength to break through the super-strength shell.
Similarly, an egg laid by a bantam hen but fertilized by a standard-sized rooster isn’t a great candidate for hatching. The size of the egg is determined entirely by the genetics and age of the hen, with no accounting for the size of the rooster. So if a full size chick begins to develop inside a tiny bantam egg shell, it’s not likely to survive.
Some people say rounded eggs are more likely to hatch hens, while elongated ones hatch more roosters. Some chicken tenders swear by that, but it hasn’t been scientifically proven.
Lastly, consider that eggs are porous. If you hold a flashlight up to one in a dark room, you can see little spots where light passes through the tiny holes in the shell. For this reason it’s important to incubate the cleanest eggs you can (but NEVER wash them). If an egg has visible poop on it, it isn’t a good candidate for incubation. Compare the eggs you have available, and try to choose the ones that are less porous, since they’re less likely to be contaminated with bacteria. Make sure your hands are clean when you handle the eggs, so you don’t introduce any.
Placing the Eggs
If you’ve received shipped eggs, store them at room temperature, in a carton with the smaller end facing downward for 24 hours before placing them in the incubator. This allows time for their air cells to stabilize. It isn’t as much of a concern if you’re hatching eggs you gathered locally, but it can’t hurt.
The incredible thing about eggs is that they can sit in suspended animation for a long time. You can choose to incubate an egg you’d planned on eating, even after it’s been sitting out on your counter for several days. You can even pull a fertilized egg out of the freezer, bring it to room temperature, and give incubation a try. It won’t begin to develop until its placed near a heat source, so a ten-day-old egg should hatch on the same day as an egg that when into the incubator on the day it was laid. Eggs over two weeks old are associated with a lower hatch rate, though.
Make sure you don’t wash the eggs before putting them in. Eggs are protected by a natural bloom which protects them from bacteria in the environment, and removing that will lower your odds of hatching healthy chicks.
Candling
Candling the eggs is the most exciting part, next to watching your chick hatch. It’s also a very important step, because any eggs that don’t develop can become rotten, stink, and put all the others at risk. All you need is a bright light, a dark room, and clean, steady hands. I disinfected my cell phone and held its flashlight up to our egg and could see pretty well. You may not be able see as much if you’re hatching eggs with darker shells, but by the 10th day you should at least see some darker lines showing up along the inner membrane of the shell.
Day 4 
Day 9 
Day 13
By the time you get to Day 18 (lockdown day, as many in the chicken community call it), you should stop candling the egg altogether. The chicks will be rolling into the ideal position for hatching, and you don’t want to shake them up or turn them over once it gets there. The eggs would look almost completely back inside if you candled them anyway, because the chicks fill up all the space available to them.
Lockdown
It’s hard, but you must leave the eggs alone from days 18 through 22. If you’re watching closely, you’ll see them wiggle just a little but every once in awhile. Once the chicks are in the right position for hatching, with their heads tucked under their right wings, they’ll use their beaks to pierce the shell membrane and take their first breaths. You can’t see any of this, but if you listen closely, you might be able to hear it their little voices peeping. The process of internal pipping is tiring for the chicks, and they’ll rest for awhile once it’s completed.
That’s when things start to get crazy. One by one, the chicks will run out of air between the shell membrane and the shell, and they’ll ‘pip,’ or poke their little beaks through the shell to the outside world. It’s important not to try and help them hatch, because the chicks may not be finished absorbing the egg yolk at this point. Contrary to popular belief, the yolk isn’t the part of the egg that becomes a chick. It’s the nutrition that sustains the chick through hatching and the first day or two of life.
When the chick is ready, and has finished resting up from the exhaustion of pipping it’ll begin to ‘zip,’ using its egg tooth (a sharp, temporary cap on the end of its beak) to crack the shell along the length of its wing. This can happen as late as 24 hours after the initial pip, but once it starts, the chick will hatch very quickly. It’ll use its legs and wings to push its way out of the shell, stopping every now and then to rest. You may be tempted to help the chick, but it’s almost always better not to. Instead, keep a close eye on the humidity in the incubator, since hatching chicks seem to raise it. You don’t want any chicks still in the pipping phase to drown.
Once all the chicks have hatched, you don’t have to worry about humidity anymore. Gradually let it return to the same levels as the room you’re incubating in, but keep the temperature between 95 and 100 degrees. The chicks won’t need to eat or drink anything for a day or two after they hatch, because the nutrition from the egg will sustain them. Leave them in the incubator for a few hours at the very least, so they can regain some strength and begin to dry off.
What’s Next?
As long as you have something separating the chicks in the incubator from the heat source so they don’t get burned, you can take a well-earned break. The chicks don’t need anything from you for awhile. You can sleep, then go about the business of setting up your brooder if you haven’t already. It’s important that the chicks have bedding in their brooder so that their feet can have traction. If they’re sliding around in those first days, their leg muscles won’t develop properly. Be sure the temperature on the warm end of your brooder is between 95 and 100 degrees for the first week, then gradually decrease it, by about five degrees per week, until the chicks are fully feathered or you’ve reached room temperature.
It’s extremely important that your brooder also has a cool end, far from the heat plate or heat lamp, where the temperature is the same as the room around the brooder. Chicks are good at regulating their own body temperatures by moving to a warmer or cooler spot as long as such a spot is available. Keep food and water in the middle of the brooder, so they can eat without having to be very hot or very cold. Chicks will peck instinctively, so feeding is easy. Chick starter/grower crumble is best for young birds, since the food manufactured for laying hens contains too much calcium for them. Chicks don’t know what water is, or that they need it until you show them. When the chicks are about a day old, dip their beaks into the shallow waterer (they can drown in a deep one) a couple of times to help them get the idea. If you don’t see them return to it on their own, repeat the process in a few hours, or try getting them to drink with a dropper. Once they know about water and where to find it, your only concern will be keeping them from kicking all their bedding into it.
Keep an eye on the chicks’ behinds, because pasty butt is a common ailment. What happens, mostly in brooders where chicks can’t get away from the heat, but sometimes in other cases as well, is that poop sticks to a chick’s backside, sealing it closed and this can be fatal. The poop can also attract attention from other chicks, who may peck at it and cause injury. What you’ll need to do if this happens is soak the chick in lukewarm water, and afterward gently wipe the poop away. Never pick at their behinds, because a newly hatched chick’s navel is located in that vicinity, and you could injure it by inadvertently pulling it’s umbilical cord. If anything is still stuck to the chick after you’ve soaked and wiped it, leave it alone, and separate the chick if others are pecking at it. The navel should finish healing on its own within a day or two.
You’ll find that the chickens are very dusty. It’s a good idea to clean out the brooder regularly, but don’t go overboard with disinfectants. Chickens are very sensitive to fumes.
What about the eggs that didn’t hatch?
Most eggs will hatch by the end of the 22nd day, but it isn’t uncommon for some to take longer. It couldn’t hurt to leave the incubator on and monitor the temperature and humidity through the 24th day, just in case. At that point, if there aren’t signs of movement or pipping from the remaining eggs, you might candle to try and see if the chicks are still alive. If they are, put them right back in the incubator. Cracking the eggs in an attempt to help chicks hatch will only be traumatic for everyone.
Because so much can go wrong in the development and hatching process, it’s a good idea to start out with an extra egg or two and not “count them before they hatch.” We were fortunate to have a positive outcome from our single-egg incubation, but it could have easily been devastating. On the flips side of that, though, is the fact home-hatched chickens have a 50/50 chance of being roosters, so I’d prefer not to incubate very many. Hatching a small number of chicks and adding in some feed store pullets seems like a good balance to me. Click here to see what Moriah looks like today!