Final Outcome

23 of 27 hatched! Thats pretty good odds. All are healthy and happy and Im getting ready to do it again! This time Im only using eggs from my Rhode Island Red girls because they are prolific layers of large, dark brown, yummy eggs! Enjoy the pics!

WOOT! 6 chicks and counting!

Whew! It has been a day! So this morning temp and humidity was holding within an aceptable range and I had several pips. Then in a matter of an hour I had two chicks out of their eggs!

Almost there!

Its hard to take pics through the bator window.

So I left for work and I worried all day....about those two chicks that had hatched and about all the others. If you live in Oklahoma you know it got HOT today. I rushed home after work expecting maybe a couple more babies. I had 4 more for a total of 6!!!! BUT the bator humidity had risen from an acceptable 70% to a completely unacceptable 99 due to our weather! There was water dripping from the bator windows and the babys were sopping wet. I went to my friends at www.backyardchickens.com for advice. Normally you do not take the lid off the bator until all your eggs have hatched because the drop in humidity can cause "shrinkage" which means the membrane surrounding the chicks adheres to their face and body resulting in death....

DEATH IS NOT AN OPTION WITH ME! So I quickly took the lid off, removed a sopping wet sponge, grabbed the babies out, wiped the condensation off the windows, checked each pipped egg for life...each one was still chirping-very good news! Lid replaced, babies in the brooder, humidity back to normal and we are back in business! Theres lots of noise coming from the bator and several are zipping around their eggs. Should have more babies tonight :)

On the way to the brooder.....still a little damp.

Drying nicely and looking oh so sweet!!!!

Eggs are in LOCKDOWN!

Its day 18 and the eggs are on lockdown which simply means they wont be turned anymore and the lid stays put. The eggs are placed small end down in the egg cartons because that keeps the air cell at the top and thats where the chick will break through. Large end down would mean a drowned chick and we dont want that :o ! The humidity must be raised to about 70% and that what the sponges are for. There are channels in the bottom of the incubator that hold water also. See that rather large egg by the green sponge? Thats the double-yolker (twins). It has to remain laying down or the chick on bottom would must certainly drown. This egg will be quite an experiment...if the chicks survive I will have to help the one on bottom out. Thats a delicate job...if I help it out too early it will bleed to death, too late and I have a dead chick. So much could go wrong with that one that Im trying not to be overly hopeful. So between tonight and Sunday, there should be babies if all went well :) Cross your fingers! I will post progress pics and any new developments.

Check out the two bantam babies I bought a few weeks ago! So cute and they have tons of feathers on there feet

Summers Past...

I love summer...especially the planting. Every year I plant a garden of vegetables and herbs and around our pond and yard we have loads of flowers and shrubs. I couldnt wait to get started and since we are still having the occasional cold night I decided to start some seeds. See the larger plants below? Those are moon flowers. They only bloom at night and the smell is outta this world!

This is a moon flower plant in all its glory!

Here are some of my favorite photos of summers past.....

Hitchin a ride!

How dogs cool off in the dog days of summer :)

Oh yeah..we have berries too!

I bought this cute rooster wind chime to celebrate the arrival of Spring 2011!

And today I planted 3 lavender plants by the pond....Im officially ready for summer now!

10 different herb seeds started....

Double Yolkers

I got rained out remodeling a kids wooden playhouse into a new chicken summer home :) Thought it would be a good time for a blog entry!



I posted earlier about the possibility of one of the incubating eggs being a "double-yolker"...I candled it today and indeed it is. In nature these eggs never make it. The bottom twin will drown in fluids or be smooshed while the top twin sometimes hatches successfully. Want to watch an assisted hatch of twins?



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1ZeEY-kt7A

A most EGG-CITING adventure!

Time for the count-down! In 21 days (April 9th) we should have some hatching eggs, if all goes well. I marked an "x" on one side and an "o" on the other side of each egg because I will be turning the eggs several times a day. See those 2 tiny white eggs at the very top? These are my experimental eggs. Word on the street is, some folks have had success incubating recently refrigerated eggs. I was really hoping Goldie, my tiny pet bantam would lay an egg to add to the other 29 but the last eggs she layed was several days ago. I decided to grab 2 of those and add to mix. It will be a MIRACLE if one of those 2 hatch since I didnt even bother to let it come to room temperature before adding it to the incubator. Also, theres a rather large egg that might be a double-yolker. If the chicks make it to hatching there has only been one case that I know of where both chicks survived and that was with an assisted hatch. This could really be interesting. Im confident in my ability to do an assisted hatch but its nerve wracking just the same :O Having raised parrots and incubating their eggs I did several assisted hatches but never for twins!

So heres the run-down....in 7-10 days I will candle the eggs and see which ones are fertile and developing. On day 18 the incubator will go into "lockdown" which just means I will not open it for any reason. Humidity during hatching is very important. Chicks should hatch anytime between days 19 and 25.

So while there wont be a whole heck of a lot to see or report on the next week or so I will post other happenings from the farm :)

The temp you see is NOT the normal temp the incubator will stay at. Its low because I just added all the eggs. It will slowly creep back up to a steady 99.5-100 and humidity around 40-45%.

Spring Chickens!

Spring has sprung! This year Im off on a new adventure. Last spring I ordered baby chicks from Cackle hatchery and thus began my chicken addiction :) They were the cutest little fuzzy butts and now they are providing my family and others with delicious farm fresh eggs. I've grown fond of the "girls" and so I've decided to add more ladies to the flock but this time Im incubating eggs from my lovely ladies and cutting out the middle man. BTW we do have roosters too...3 are in with the 20+ girls and there are 2 Rhode Island Red hens and 4 roos that are free range. They run amuck and generally stick close to the coop and chicken pen. This is what happens when you end up with more roos than you need but dont have the heart to make soup out of them!

I set up the incubator tonight and will give it a couple days for the temperature to stabilize....

In the meantime I'm picking out select eggs from the daily egg-gather to incubate. So far I've got these 10....Im really hoping my tiny little bantam hen, Goldie, will lay one of her teeny eggs so I can incubate it :) Maybe tomorrow.