Let the hatching begin!

Last night I figured I would test out my new candler I made to fit over my husbands big flash light and I had a surprise!  The first egg I picked up peeped!  I thought I was hearing things, because after all, I gave them the hatch date of March 19th and that is not until Monday.  I had a closer look at the egg in my hand and sure enough there was a pip!

Of course, my curiosity got the better of me, and since I had my home made candler set up right there, I had to pop it on to get a look at it!  Usually I don't candle during lock down. Usually it's right before I put them in lock down to remove any dead eggs.

Turns out that I counted wrong when I gave them their hatch date.  I recounted, and the 'new' date is supposed to be March 15th.  I counted several times to be sure this time.  So the eggs are actually starting to pip on day 19!

There was one polish egg pipped and one cochin egg pipped, as well as peeping coming from an Easter Egger egg.  You can only imagine my excitement and surprise!

Broken into the Air Cell.  Polish Egg.

This one isn't there yet.  You can still see the blood vessels in this one.  It was alive and moving around.

Cochin egg, into the air cell.

This is an egg that has not been incubated.  Freshly laid.

So I took the racks out and put them on their sides.  I usually would put them fat sides up in an egg carton for hatching, but didn't want to take the extra time to do this with the lid off.  So I hope this changing of position at this stage doesn't have a bad effect on them.  

I also put added more water to the water troughs and a couple wet sponges to try and up the humidity.  The humidity has been about 40% lately.  It went up to 55%, and a little while ago I cracked the bottom open and squirted some warm water in there to try and up it more.  I hope it isn't to dry in there.

Oh, Yay!  Just now as I was typing, I heard exciting peeping and went and checked, and there was an Easter Egg chick out of it's egg.  I checked about 15 minutes before, and it just had a fair sized hole pecked!  And the polish egg that I first saw pipped last night is starting to zip!  

Here's the first Chick!  An Easter Egger wins the race!

The polish egg that was pipped last night started to zip right after the Easter Egger hatched.

And zips some more...

A little more zipping, and it gives a stretch...

It gets it's foot up...

And out...

Getting ready for the big shove...

At last it lifts it's head.

Hatching is hard work...

Stretching the wings for the first time!

And at last the Easter Egger chick has a friend!

As of now there are 4 hatched, and 23 eggs left to go!

Let the hatching begin!!!!

Thought I would add a picture of my home made candler.