Helping Chicks Out of Their Shells

Egg Basics

• Chicken eggs need to incubate for approximately 21 days before they are ready to hatch. Chicken eggs can either be incubated naturally by a hen or they can be placed in an incubator and artificially incubated by the machine. Chickens are more likely to have successful hatchings than artificial incubation, but the can produce only a limited number of chicks at a time. Incubators can produce large numbers of chicks but may have fewer successful live chicks per total number of eggs. You should not even begin looking for your eggs to hatch until they are at least 21 days old.

Natural Hatching

• When a chick hatches naturally, she will break through the shell with the egg tooth located on the edge of her beak. The hole is called a pip. After the chick creates the pip there will be a moment while the chick begins breathing and acclimating herself to normal air outside the egg. Once the chick has gotten used to the air, she will begin the second stage of pipping. In this stage, the chick will rotate around inside the egg, cutting through the shell and membrane with the egg tooth until the entire top of the egg is cut through. At this point, the chick will emerge from the egg.

Hatching Problems

• Sometimes a chick can not hatch properly. The reasons for hatching problems can include a dead or seriously weak chick, a chick who has serious health problems, a chick who is too large, or problems with your incubator. An incubator that does not have enough humidity will dry out the membranes inside the eggs, creating a sticky membrane that does not let the chick hatch easily. Large chicks may have problems because they can not turn around inside the egg due to a lack of space.

Deciding to Help

• You can choose to help a chick who is having problems hatching. If the chick has been working to hatch for several hours and you notice it is not chirping as often or moving around the way she should be, you may elect to try and help the chick. Some people believe that chicks should never have help hatching, but others report successfully assisting their chicks and producing healthy chickens as a result of the assistance. Choosing whether to help a chick will be your choice.

Helping Your Chick

• Helping your chicks hatch safely can be challenging. You will need to use a warm, wet wash cloth wrapped around the egg to keep the membrane and egg as moist as possible while still leaving an air hole for your chick to breathe out of. Take a pair of dull tweezers and gently use them to break through the shell in a manner that imitates your chick's natural pecking actions. When you have removed a significant part of the shell, the chick should be able to take over or may simply come out of the shell if you have made enough room for her to do so.