My Hatch Rates are really successful .. Read this!

My hatch rates are really successful with my own eggs. I honestly have no explanation to why I get hatches sooner than many others. I had even hatched same breeds from my eggs as others and mine hatched first. Maybe it's how I care for and raise my chickens? I really do not know. I am showing you all this so you can see how different eggs can hatch at different rates. This is absolutely ok. Some breeds can also play an effect on hatching.

In these photos it is day 19 1/2 when they started pipping and almost day 20 by mid day when these photos were taken. Hatch days are stated to be 21 days incubation time. So don't worry if you get early hatches, day of hatches, or heck late bloomers who take a day or more longer.

Just please don't let your eggcitement make you feel the need to open the incubator and bother the eggs. I have seen bad advice given suggesting to candle them after day 18 and before day 22. Please do not, regardless of what other people do. Especially drives me nuts when experienced people tell inexperienced people to mess with the incubator and bother the eggs. Trust me, from an experienced person, it's too risky to do so when you do not know what you are doing. I have killed chicks listening to such bad advice, even dropped an egg and killed the chick. If I would've let nature do, what nature does best. They would have survived. Don't let impatience win. They will hatch if they are meant to hatch. Opening that incubator can reduce the success rates. I have high success rates now, because I stopped letting my impatience take over. I am not making them hatch sooner or bettering their odds candling them or messing with them. I'm only maybe satisfying my curiosity and also hurting their odds.

In these three incubators I have eggs collected from my chickens and eggs collected from a local chicken breeder at the same time. My eggs are Olive Eggers and Marans.

From Left to Right:
Photo 1 has her eggs and none have even begun to pip. They aren't doing anything we can see or hear yet.
Photo 2 has eggs I collected, Olive Eggers. 7 out of 11 have already pipped and are hatching. As you can see there is a little baby already in there.
Photo 3 has both eggs from my chickens and eggs from the breeders. My Maran eggs are hatching and pipping. Her eggs are not doing anything we can see or hear yet.

These photos are just for fun. Look at those cutie faces.
I wanted to show you how quickly some chicks can hatch. These photos were taken about 6 mins apart. See the first one, the chick has pipped a little bit and then the second one a lot! Wow.

But also take notice of the second egg. It has not changed at all in both photos. Some chicks take longer than others. As a matter of fact a few hours went by and it only pipped just a tiny bit more. We can see it moving and it's beak.. but it is just resting a lot and will eventually catch up. I have no intentions of trying to help it as if it needs it rest, it shouldn't be bothered. It also may not have fully absorbed it's yolk sac or blood. So it's very important to let it be and don't open the incubator.

Update: After a few more hours the second egg did fully hatch and a healthy chick was born!