Thursday, February 26, 2009

Happy chirping

Well, a lot has happened since my last post. Yesterday morning, the first chick hatched. We were sitting right next to the incubator, when we heard a much louder crack than any of the previous ones. We peeked in, and there was a chick! He looked pretty pathetic, because he was all wet. He was flopping around, and started climbing over top of all the other eggs. Only about an hour later, the second chick was born. For this one, I sat there with my camera, recording its every more. (for 20 minutes, with a sore back! Just for your viewing pleasure) Look:More kept hatching, and as of this morning 12 out of 30 eggs have hatched. Likely, not all the eggs will hatch, and I have to say I'm amazed by the results so far. The thermometer we used was cheap and crappy, and the fan broke. So some areas of the incubator might have been too warm, while others too cold. The purpose behind the fan is to even out the heat. Next time, with the fan, we'll see I we can get an even better success rate. I'm pretty sure there's at least one more chick, ready to come out, so that would make a success rate of 43%

The born chicks were creating quite a ruckus, climbing over each other and the other eggs. I was also worried about them hurting each other in such a small space, so I got my chick brooder set up. I had to clean it out, fix the chicken wire on the top, haul hay from the upper pasture, buy food, clean the water can, drag the box into the garage, and buy a heat light bulb. Now the chicks are happily situated in their box. We were going to sell them, but we have a special bond with them, because these are the first chicks we have had at the farm that came from our own chickens!

When I gathered the eggs, I found this cute egg

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Wat leuk !!!

Het lijkt erop dat je Gingers haar hebt geknipt ?

Nancy Sabina said...

What a fun series of photos! Tell you aching back thank you! And congrats on your success.

Kaitlyn said...

Oh that is too neat! So adorable :)

wannabee free said...

Thanks for the wonderful pics. My kids loved them too. How wonderful!

santino, polly and little dude Eli said...

Those are wonderful pictures to view the process. Very neat, thanks for sharing! You are a great chick mama! :) They are so cute when they are newborn, ... and crazy when they grow up bigger and they grow so fast!

Grandpa Earl said...

12 or 13 out of 30 sounds about right for a broken fan. Get it fixed and the humidity just right and you should have more like 25+ out of 30. It is great to see it happen, isn't it?
That little egg looks like a chicken's first egg. If so, you'll start seeing bigger ones as it kicks into laying season. That's a cute girl holding the cute, little egg.

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