Hatching day arrived…

So, on day 18 for my 9 eggs & day 17 for the eggs from chickenstreet (Saturday) I stopped the turning mechanism and increased the humidity to 65%. I noticed quite a few of the eggs were rocking, including the ones not due to stop turning til the following day, which was very early for rocking! All candled ok so looked forward to 12 babies to start hatching on the Tuesday/Wednesday.
However on the evening of day 19 (Sunday) I noticed this…

pipped egg

This little chick had pipped 2 days early!
At first I was excited but I then had a mild panic as it was now bedtime and I hadn’t got anything ready. The brooder wasn’t clean in fact it was still full of toys ( yes its a plastic toybox), I hadn’t sterilised the drinker or cleaned and disinfected the electric hens.I had bought the chick crumb so at least they could eat. Luckily the chicks stay in the incubator for approximately 24 hours before needing to go in a brooder so I had the following day to get it all ready. Because the chicks pip was quite big, I expected it would hatch overnight, so I set up the CCTV.

Its a wired system but so easy to use, in the morning when I switched the tv on I was greeted by not one, but two little chicks!

Two early chicks! both my pekins one lavender and one black. the rest followed in fairly quick succession over that and the following day.

little black pekin chick on its way out below

while all this was going on I got the brooder all set up and once the chicks were fluffy and dry they moved into the brooder, which meant the just hatched ones could rest.

Unfortunately the last egg containing a lemon cuckoo chick from chickenstreet was bashed about by the others. The shell was broken, breaking blood vessels in the membrane and the chick inside died.

These are the 11 that did hatch, pictures taken on their way to the brooder, approx 24 hrs old.

They are the loveliest little things, the sablepoots ( one is pictured with a penny) are tiny!
Their feathers started coming through really quickly! I think 7 or 8 of my 9 pekins are frizzled

They are growing up beautifully and are a week old now