INCOMING!

LOCKDOWN DAY!

The 10 Chickam eggs got their final turn last night at 11PM, and today got moved to the bottom of the incubator in preparation for hatching. Larger eggs to the back, smaller eggs out in front.

 

This is the first hatch for our new Vevor incubator...although not really a fair test for it, for reasons I'll get into further down (because it's not Chickam without some kind of damn drama). But this is when we raise the humidity to 65% (from 50%), and open the incubator five times a day for about a minute, to get fresh air in there. No longer turning the eggs signals the chicks to rotate into hatching position, then they pip the aircell inside, THEN they'll pip.

One of the eggs, #4 (on left, in front), peeped at me when I moved it. That's Bobo's egg, she's a tiny black bantam Cochin. Our bantam eggs have always hatched early, sometimes as early as the first day of lockdown! I checked carefully both visually and by feel, and nobody's pipped yet.

We had a 4 hour power outage last night, a repeat of ANOTHER 4-5 hour outage at around day 7. Just like for the first one, I placed a hot water bottle in the incubator and was able to keep the temperature at an acceptable 99.7 to 100.5 degrees...but it shot the humidity ALL to shit, spiking it at 80-90% (eggs at that stage want 50%!). I had to keep opening the incubator every 15 minutes to vent it off.

Of the two big girls who had gone broody, Gretchen refused to sit on test eggs, but Sticky did--so we held her in reserve in case the power didn't come back on before our bedtime. Sticky being a 1 year old, zero-experience mom, I didn't want to put all our eggs in one basket (sorry) by giving them to her unless we had no other choice.

I'm not sure what effect those two events had on the hatching eggs, if any.  If the humidity is too high for too long, water fills the air cell...and when the chicks pip into it for air to breathe, they drown. There's no way for me to tell if water has filled the air cells, and nothing we can do about it, anyway. So we just cross our fingers and hope.

I'm not going to move the camera off the chicks until one of the eggs starts actually unzipping--eggs can pip up to 24 hours before they start to unzip. Watch or follow the Chickam account on BlueSky for updates:

Chickam on BlueSky

Watch the chicks now at the link below, eggs are due to hatch this Saturday & Sunday, May 31st and June 1st!

Chickam! 

There's a kid-friendly chat feature there (anyone NOT keeping things kid-friendly will get banned, no second chances), and as always you can submit a name for the chicks--one per person please--we'll pick names out of a hat as chicks hatch. 

Chickam Eggs For 2025 Candled!

For those who don't know, on the 10th day of incubation we candle (shine a bright light) through the eggs to check for embryos--and weed out any duds.

So far I'm cautiously optimistic that the 5 hour power outage we suffered on the 2nd day of incubation hasn't affected our eggs. We really won't know until hatch day, May 31st - June 1st. 

 

But here's what we have!

Out of 15 eggs set, we have 10 with embryos, another one is an unknown because of a shell to dark to definitively see through (it stays in anyway), and 4 duds that never developed (eggs from Boudica - gold laced Wyandotte, Arson - Light Brahma mix, and two that were possibly from Gretchen - lavender splash Orpington).

 

Here's the 2025 Chickam roster of 11 eggs, with mamas listed if we know them. Turns out camping in the coop for two days obsessively watching eggs fall out of hen asses paid off!

 

1 - Peanut (Americaunas, dark shell, so unsure if viable)

2 - Takoyaki (Giant Cochin/Americanas mix, hatched 2024)

4 -  Bobo (tiny black bantam Cochin'd'Uccle mix)

5, 6 - Luna (silver-gray bantam Cochin mix)

7, 8 - Brick (gray/lemon bantam Cochin mix)

9, 10 - Large White eggs - Apricot? (Danish Brown Leghorn)

13, 15 - Arson (Light Brahma mix)

 

We're disappointed that Gretchen and Sticky weren't mamas this year...but in exchange they have BOTH gone broody and stand a great chance of being recruited to be Chickam mom this year!

For dads we have: Mjolnir the buff Orpington, Eggroll the blue laced red Wyandotte, and Bacon, a bantam Belgian D'anvers. I'm betting Bacon will be daddy for the bantam hens--the big girls are too optimistic of a climb for him. And the big boys have trouble locating the...um...needed area to sucessfully 'daddy' for the bantam hens.

But they've surprised us in the past!

 

 Next stop is hatch day!

When we go live, you'll see the livestream to click on here:  Chickam 2025 Live Stream

 

 

Morehens Disease, But With Dignity...And Rationalization

Our Chickam eggs are in the incubator, and due to hatch May 31st, +/- a day or so. Tonight I'll candle the eggs to see how many embryos we have...or ANY, given the 5 hour power outage we had two days into incubation (because it just isn't Chickam without some kind of damned drama).

But to our suprise, one of our local feed stores got in a batch of heritage breeds...most of which are are on the Endangered List. Yes, some American chicken breeds are in danger of extinction, check out this dismayingly long list: Livestock Conservancy Conservation Priority List.

 

So I'm rationalizing today's chick purchase as 'doing our part to save the breed'.

It's not because they are SO cute and fluffy. It's not.

Well, okay, maybe.

 

Anyway, here's today's Morehens Disease outbreak. The feed store had helpful one-page info  sheets. These chicks hatched 5/14, so are 5 days old today (no names yet, I'll update when we name them). And yes, the prices wouldn't normally be this outrageous. Production breed chicks go for $2 to $4 each...but thanks to these being special breeds...and $10 a dozen egg prices driving the demand for backyard chickens...oh, well. Hopefully all these are hens.

 

I may run a livestream on these guys starting tomorrow (the 20th)...and as two of our larger breed hens have gone broody, they might get a mama starting on the 24th, the plan being to add our hatched chicks to the group under her on the 31st. I've never tried that before, so if things go south with her rejecting the new chicks, mama would get bounced back out to the barnyard.

 

Supernova, a drama llama Mottled Java, Critically Endangered:

 

Mayhem (the larger chick) and Havoc (the smaller one), Russian Orloffs, Threatented: We got two, because Orloffs are seriously awesome! The smaller one is struggling a bit, so is getting round the clock assistance in the form of icky Nutri-Drench drops (what the heck do I need with sleep, anyway?):

  

 

Moose, a Salmon Faverolle, Watch:

Favs are also famously awesome clowns--even more so than any other chicken. Check this out: Peaches Is Loud 

 

 

 

Favs are feather footed, fluffy headed...and have 5 toes. They look like an AI generated chicken with all those toes, and ours hasn't yet quite worked out what to do with hers.

And because we can't lay off the ridiculously fat, fluffy eating machine breeds, THREE Orpingtons.

Rainbow, a Blue English Orpington:

 

Zigzag, a Jubilee Orpington:

 

Doughnut, a Chocolate Orpington:

Hard to see in the pics, but if you look them up online, they honest to Pete are the color of milk chocolate!

That's it.

For now.

But next week the feed store is getting some Prairie Bluebells. 

Update, 5/26

...and I have pretty much zero self-control.

So today the kid and I picked up a gray Prairie Bluebell chick, her name is Enzyme! They lay blue eggs! This one yelled a LOT during picture time, and is giving me some quality stink eye. But she does have lovely gray eyes, BTW:

 

 And a Bielefelder chick, named Huntress. She came with the leg band--a good thing because she looks a lot like the Orloffs:

 

 

Both of these girls are a new breed to us, and neither is an endangered breed. I was after a brown Prairie Bluebell, because I love that Creole coloring--but all they had was gray. But the Bielefelder has that Creole coloring, so I got it after all!

 

See how I rationalized that second chick?
 

Yikes...

Looking back at my posting history here, I see a sharp dropoff during the time my heart issue started making itself known...

...and then really took center stage. And while I was posting some on Twitter and later on BlueSky, my energy level had been sliding for so long that at that point, it was less than nothing. I only made two posts here in 2024--both for Chickam.

So I'll try to do better...and that means I'm going to backpost a few things here. So if you follow me on BlueSky (I've left Twitter, and no, I'll never call it that) you'll see 'new blog post' pop up now and then, for stuff that happened in the last year.

BTW, the bill for my TAVR heart surgery was four pages long and came to $176,436.22...with the little valve clocking in at $120,000 all by its lonesome. This did not include a seperate bill for $900 in blood work. But my surgeon, his team, and the nursing staff at the hospital were all freakin' awesome.

Healthcare in America, kids!

IT HAS BEGUN!

In prepping for our annual Chickam webcast, I run the incubator and associated equipment for at least a week. This year was no different, and everything had been purring along beautifully...

...until three days before I was due to set the eggs in the incubator.

 

That's when my trusty, 8 year old ReptiPro incubator suddenly stopped heating.

Despite opening it up for a good cleaning (and finding nothing appeared amiss), it refused to be resurrected. Well and truly borked. And the ReptiPro company no longer exists, haha.

 

Okay, I find one over at Vevor for a reasonable price that looks identical to my old ReptiPro, and get it ordered. But this means it will also be subject to a week-long test run, so our original Chickam start date & hatch date are out the window. 

 

Luckily it performs well, despite a few kinda big issues, cool chicken-disco blue light aside.

 

See that black thing on the top? That's a madly spinning, UNCOVERED fan. As you stand in front of the incubator it is below your eye level...and easy to forget it's there. Perfect for taking the hide off the back of your hand when you reach in there, haha.

I know this, because...

Yeah.

 

The exposed cord running from it down to the built-in fan is...odd, and no doubt will get pecked by curious chicks. Also, the two racks we always used in the ReptiPro to hold eggs are impossible, because (as revealed in the manual, no less!) there is a FIVE DEGREE TEMPERATURE SPLIT  BETWEEN THE TWO RACKS.

I tested it, and sure enough, one rack ran at 99.5, the other at 104.5 

Chicken eggs require a constant incubation temperature of 100.5, haha.

 

We must use the space between the upper and lower racks. This means we can only run ONE rack of 12-15 eggs, depending on their size.

But by far the worst thing is, there's no cord notch in the frame that the ReptiPro had--I cannot use my trusty water weasel/temperature probe combination to mimic an egg and give me a dead-on temperature reading inside an egg. And I don't have time to cut a cord notch in the brand-new incubator (for extra fun, the manual says there IS a notch. It lies).

*sigh*

 

Okay, run with what ya got. So here it is, today we started 15 eggs from our flock! In an effort to get eggs from certain hens, the kid and I spent two solid days sitting out in the coop, Johnny-on-the-spot catching the girls laying eggs...with so-so success. That's why you'll see names written on eggs--the ones with a question mark means we are only 90% certain of mama.

 

I'll candle them in 10 days to see how many embryos we have and remove any duds. Hatch day *should* be Saturday, May 31st - Sunday, June 1st.

 

When the first egg pips, we'll start our YouTube webcast here:

www.youtube.com/@jackshenhouse