A Newbies View

Think this is normal Penny I've noticed mine usually lay 2/3 eggs before they start to incubate them. Great news that they have started to lay.

Penny,

Some fanciers (including me at times) do the canary trick with replacing first 4-5 eggs with dummys and then reset on day/egg 5-6 so that the chicks mostly hatch out on the same day. (not necessarily at same time). This is done to encourage the parents to feed youngsters and not worry about rest of eggs too much and letting singletons die.

Hope things are going well for you.

Andyn