The chick incubation process
- alizajoy2011
- Jun 1
- 7 min read
Recently, we incubated chicks. We've incubated chicks before, and that was when our life with chickens began. They are now 2 years old, and we decided it was time to get some new chickens. So, we went to Weston-Super-Mare and collected 12 eggs. In the end, 11 hatched. The first time, we had 12 eggs and 5 hatched. The process of yolk and albumen into chicks and an empty shell has fascinated me since the first time we incubated, so I decided I would write about it.
The start of the incubation process
To begin, you have to set up the incubator to the perfect temperature and humidity. The temperature was an average of 37.8, and the humidity on average was 43.9%. Once the incubator is hitting the right temperature and humidity consistently, that's when you know it's safe to put the eggs in. Mind you, the eggs need to have rested a day; they don't really like being in a van/car, depending if you bought them home yourself or got them delivered. You get a better hatch rate if you take them home yourself, which is good to know, if you ask me. From day one till day 18, you will need to turn the eggs at least 3 times a day, if your incubator doesn't do it automatically. This prevents the embryo from sticking to the side of the egg during development.
Candling and the embryos
After 5 days, you can candle the eggs. Candling the eggs is basically shining a really bright torch into the bottom of the egg in a dark room. It basically lights up the egg, and shows you what's going on inside. By the 5th day, there will already be a small embryo, this looks somewhat like a dark mass in the middle with spindly lines coming from it which are spidery veins inside the egg.
It will grow from the dark mass and fill half of the egg, which will show as a large dark mass, and at this point you can easily see movement. This is at roughly day 14. At day 18ish, the whole egg will be dark, and you will be going into lockdown.
Lockdown and the hatch
I don't mean lockdown like everyone did for Covid, but rather I mean you stop turning the eggs. This gives the embryo a chance to pip and unzip, which is making a hole in the egg shell in order to breathe. But before hand, the chick will break the membrane into the air cell. You can see the air cell on any egg; it is located in the large end of the egg.
Once the air cell has been burst, the chick will breathe for the first time, and set to work making a hole in the shell (pipping), which lets more air in, then it will continue by extending the hole till it goes almost the whole way round the shell. Unzipping. From here, the chick will push it way out of the shell, and voila! One chick! There are problems that can occur while hatching, however, such as shrink wrapping. We once had this problem, in the 2024 hatch. (Two years ago) He needed help to hatch, we wouldn't have helped him if he wasn't shrink wrapped. He survived, thankfully, but there was one other chick that didn't survive that year.
More about our chicks :)
In 2024, 5 of the chicks hatched. 3 were boys, and 2 were girls. Their names were:
Nugget and Nutmeg, two Crested Cream Legbars, Nugget was a boy, and Nutmeg was a girl. They both belonged to my mother.
I sadly had two boys, Diesel and Opal. I didn't know the gender of Opal for a long time, so by the time I knew, the name Opal had stuck. They were both Auracanas, Opal was a lavender Auracana, and Diesel was a black Auracana.
My sister only had one French cuckoo Marans, ( pronounced Maran, the s is silent :) ) called Freckles, but in our house she is hardly ever called that, and more often called abreebreebrebreep. There is a reason behind this nickname, but its a very random one. She was 8 weeks old roughly, and I was checking on the chickens. I rather like picking them up, and they are all very tame, so I bent down to pick up Freckles. As I picked her up, she produced a sound that wasn't unlike a camping kettle. It really made me laugh, and after telling my sister, it became her nickname. (It has been shortened a lot since, a few names that came from it are breearee, breepus, breep, etc.)
They all had different characters, as one would expect. Nugget was quite protective of the girls, and when sat on your shoulder, he rather liked his reflection in the coop window; none of the others were that bothered about their reflection, which made it quite amusing. Indeed, he was a fine gentleman as far as chickens go, but sadly he eventually became human aggressive, and had to go, alongside Diesel and Opal.
To begin with, Opal was a very friendly chicken. He absolutely loved sitting on my or my sisters lap as we swung gently on the swings. He would greet you as you entered the chicken run. But he was greedy. From day one, he was the greediest bird in the coop. And after a time, his greediness led to being a bully. He would bully Nugget. He would bully Freckles. He would bully Nutmeg. He would also bully Feathers, Ginger, and Petrol, 3 other chickens we bought later on. But we didn't hatch them, so they don't come into this much. And so, he went, eventually.
Diesel was the sweetest cockerel of the lot. Like Opal, he loved going on the swings with us, and I daresay he never tired of it. He would always fall asleep after a little while on the swing, and he would only wake up if you got off the swing and walked around a bit. His favourite thing to to was dig everything up. It probably got on my mothers nerves a bit, but it never annoyed me. He had a surprisingly close relationship with his brother, (Opal) and eventually took on his habit of being greedy, but unlike Opal, he was never a bully. But, as the saying goes, all good things come to an end. RIP Diesel.
Nutmeg was the quirky bird of the bunch. She was curious about everything, and was the most fearless bird out of them all, until Petrol joined. She was the sort that would inspect your shovel load of dirt, and (much to the disgust of my father) dig it all off. Funny, unless you are the one with the shovel... heh.... :) Nutmeg, although a great pick me up, was a very poor layer, and eventually became an egg eater. Not only that, but she had a thing with my flipflops, she really hated my feet from that day onwards. And then she realised (it would seem) that everyone has feet, and she decided that she didn't like that at all. Eventually, she, like Nugget, became human aggressive. She was, at this point, more trouble than she was worth. She, just like Nugget, Opal and Diesel, went.
Freckles, is the slow, fat one. She still is, actually. She is also a really great lap bird. The moment you sit down on a clean log in the run, she's headed in your direction. She's great to cuddle, and has never grown tired of it. Just like Opal and Diesel, she likes to be on the swings, but not as much as the boys did. She sometimes does fall asleep on you on the swing if you ruffle her neck feathers as you swing. But its never a deep sleep like Diesel used to. She will always wake up the moment you stop stroking her. Because of her dark colour and mass of feathers, she gets very hot in the summer. Me and my sister have found a way to cool her down, though. If you fill a bucket up with water (only enough to cover a large chicken up to just under her wings!!!) and pop her in it, she cools down pretty fast. It always makes me laugh, when she comes out, her feathers are always wet, and it just proves that she's all feathers, and not actually that fat at all. Unlike Nutmeg, she's a great layer, and lays beautiful dark chocolate coloured eggs. It may seem like there was something wrong with Freckles too, since all of the others are dead. But no!!!! She is alive right now, and turned two on Sunday, 17/5/2026.
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