Incubating and Hatching Eggs

Today we are on day 11 in our egg hatching process. We are hatching out Frizzle Cochin Bantam eggs for a friend of mine. I thought it would be cool to post about this, and I have no Idea why I haven't thought of it sooner!
Our incubator was made by my husband. We purchased a Styrofoam cooler, fixed it up with 2 bottle lamp kits for the heat source, a old pc fan to circulate the air, a hot water heater thermostat rigged in with the lights so they shut on and off at a certain temp. a small pan on the bottom to put water in to regulate the humidity, and hardware cloth to make a shelf for the eggs.Also you need a thermometer with a hydrometer. I got a digital one at wal mart and it works just fine.
The eggs take 21 days to hatch...give or take a day or two...The temperature in the bator needs to be between 98 degrees and 102 degrees. The inside of the egg will need to stay at about 99.5 degrees. The humidity should be stable at about 50, except for when you get close to hatch time and then you need to boost your humidity to about 75.
Then the next step is to put your eggs in and wait. The coolest thing is you can candle the eggs. Its like doing an ultrasound. You can use a very bright flashlight, and hold it up to the egg, and you can see inside. On day 7, you can see veins forming, That's usually how you tell the eggs are fertile. You can candle them up to end if you like. I candled today at day 11 and i could see the chick embryos moving around in there! Its so awesome. The next coolest thing is hatching. The first thing you will see will be a small spot on the outside of the egg where the chick is trying to peck out, that's called a pip. you most likely can hear a couple of cheeps from the inside of the egg. Then it will take another few hours for them to zip out of the shell.
When the chick has fully hatched, it looks all wet and soo pitiful, but it will dry out in about an hour or so and be just as fluffy and downy soft as you could ever hope to see. At that point you can put them in a brooder box with a light to stay warm, and introduce them to food and water. Just be careful they don't drown in the waterer, you can put some small pebbles in the waterer to keep them from drowning, and yet they can still drink. Don't be worried if they don't eat right off either, before they hatch their yolk draws into their stomach, so they can go a day or two without eating.
The only thing left to do after that is to love on your little biddies! They are sweet and very comical at times. Believe it or not they do look up to their mamma hen, and the more you handle them , and talk to them the more social they will be. Believe me I have a Big 6 month old red hen that still perches on my knee, and tries to peck the freckles off my shoulders. That's how she got the name Freckles!