What What WHAT?! Nooooo, It's Too Early!

So we came home just now to find that one of the damned eggs is pipping TODAY, at 18 days.  Chicks are *supposed* to incubate for 21 days to be fully cooked.

Nevertheless, one of the bantam eggs (Of COURSE) decided to pip today.  I just stopped turning the group, due to hatch Friday, this morning.

#38, top left, laid by Olive, our little gray bantam Cochin hen.  The other eggs surrounding it with the black dots on the end are the others due to hatch on Friday, #5, 36, 37, 39 and 40. I really hope it stops right where it is, since it should not be developed enough to survive at 18 days. You *need* 21 days to be fully cooked, ya dumb uppity banty!

And, you ask, is the brooder box ready? FUUUUUUCK NO. Now I have to grab lunch and sit and whack together a great huge box as fast as I can. If the chick hatches too early I'm bringing in Sophie, another little banty hen that went broody, and letting her mother it until more chicks hatch. Not starting the cam yet, I will if more eggs start to pip, though. I don't see Little Miss Fashionably Early Hellspawn unzipping yet, just the initial pip. The other eggs are rocking, though.

 What the HELL is with the chicken drama of some sort or another every freakin' year?!

EDIT:  Another bantam egg, #40, has pipped!  I went ahead and started the cam just in case one of them pops out overnight!