Once More, With Feeling!

Or, just the correct temperature and humidity.

The incubators are once again full of eggs. I started them yesterday morning at 9AM, so they are due to hatch on Friday, April 24th.

I think I've solved the temperature and humidity issue, by dint of a two hour scouring of the Internet. I finally found someone who was having the same problem I was back in 2004, they had posted on some obscure forum and gotten a response--someone suggested leaving in BOTH of the red ventilation plugs throughout the incubation period, only removing one of them the last three days of the hatch if needed. I had foolishly been following the manufacturer's advice and removing one of the plugs at the beginning!

This time, I experimented by running the incubators for three days before I inserted the eggs. I left both plugs in and tested those suckers for 36 hours--absolutely, dead on, STABLE! Not even a hint of a flutter in that time, night or day! Yay, success!

So now the eggs are on their way, 31 in each of the two incubators. They are sitting, side by side, on my kitchen island. The new incubator:

And the old one:

Included inside are 13 Serama eggs, tiny little things about the size of a quarter. The chicks are the size of a 9 volt battery, the adults the size of a can of Coke. :) A very kind friend on a farming forum, who breeds Seramas sent them to me via mail. Chickam will be up and running as soon as we see eggs rocking or hear chicks peeping inside the eggs. They'd better hatch, as my daughter is using them for her Science Fair project--!

I can't wait to see what happens in 21 days!