Two Days To Go...

...with no movement or sounds from the eggs yet. We're uncertain if all will hatch, some will, or none will. Candling the dark-shelled eggs is impossible, we can't see through the shells even using our brightest light. With the hatch due Monday morning, seeing the eggs rocking and hearing the chicks inside peeping tomorrow will be our only clue as to if we have any viable eggs or not.

Chickam is pointed at the nest boxes out in the coop for now, and will stay there until we have movement and peeping from the eggs. So if you see the eggs on camera, it means the hatch is a 'go'. The thermostat on the incubator proved VERY unreliable this time around, fluctuating wildly between 102 and 98 degrees...with the optimum temp of 99.5 degrees being very hard to maintain. Even with checking it often, we can't be sure if hours passed during the day when we were gone, or night while we were sleeping with the temp at a chick-killing too high or too low.

At any rate, the eggs will remain in the incubator until Thursday the 26th, in order to catch any late bloomers. If none hatch, we'll try again. J. says he wants to take the old incubator and try to install a better, more reliable thermostat in it so we'll try with that one.

Keep your fingers crossed!