Here is a progress report following a group of eggs as they are incubated, hatch and grow into mature birds. This is a good picture guide for the new Pekin keeper to see how they should look.

There are also a few notes on the actions taken for reference.

A collection of eggs were put into an incubator. Twice a day they were rotated a half turn. For the last 4 days, before hatching, they were lightly sprayed with water and placed into a hatcher. Hatchers are not essential - they simply free up space in the incubator to re-fill it with more eggs. If you are leaving the eggs in an incubator to hatch - make sure and auto turning devices are switched off.

Chicks will start to chip away at the shells around day 19. Turning of eggs should be stopped on day 19. Hatching takes place around day 20 so try not to be too excited and refrain from taking the lid off every 5 minutes!

This shows the growth of this batch of chicks so far - they begin to feather up well and should begin to feel pretty short bodied at around five weeks of age. Now you will be able to tell the sexes of the birds too.

Here, the birds are around 10 / 12 weeks old - a clear difference between pullets and cockerels can be seen and the "type" is starting to show. It would be a good idea now to separate the males and females into groups, housing all males away from the females - they always seem to grow better without being chasen around as they mature.

Now we are getting to the final stage before culling any birds which are not up to standard. The age is around 18 / 20 weeks. Birds showing all the good points as described in the Breed Standard can now be put into training pens for a month or so to see how they fully develop. There is still a lot of maturing to go - but you will have a good idea now of which to keep.