Egg Candling Update For Chickam, Round 2!

This current batch has been cooking for 10 days, which means it was time to candle for embryos!

On April 26th, I set a total of 18 eggs:  6 were bantam calico Cochin bantams bought from a poultry friend at our local chicken swap, 12 were a mix from across our flock, standard size and bantams.

Tonight when I candled, we have 8 eggs that show embryos--I'm going to say right now that some look a bit small, so might be late quitters. But I'm leaving them in the incubator to give them their shot. Out of these eggs with embryos, 1 was a calico Cochin, the other 7 from our flock.

Another 6 eggs I wasn't sure about and might be early quitters (all from our flock)--but again, I left them in.

4 eggs were duds that never developed: 3 of the calico Cochins and one of ours. I'm not too happy that the calico bantam Cochin eggs did so poorly...but when you buy eggs, you take your chances.

Hatch day SHOULD be Sunday, May 14th (Mother's Day in the US!) and/or Monday, May 15th...but as always, check the cam a day ahead. If you check and see EGGS, the hatch is on!

We have a BUNCH of broody hens right now, so the good news is that we have a very strong chance that one will accept any hatched chicks and be mom for this round!

Gearing Up For Chickam...

So I'm doing my best to avoid a repeat of the chick deathfest that has plagued Chickam for the last two years.

Chicks need to incubate at a temperature of 99.5, with humidity for day 1-18 at 50%, 65% days 19-21. Nobody does it better than a hen.

Keeping the temp/humidity consistent inside an incubator is generally agreed to be a MASSIVE PAIN. Since 2/6 I've been test running the ReptiPro and all of our assorted devices (including some nifty new ones!) that track temperature/humidity...I wanted to work out all possible bugs. Everything got calibrated (ice bath AND salt method), several times just to be sure.

Thanks to a generous Chickam patron, we were able to get some new equipment. The first is a Chef's Alarm temperature monitor (yes, it's for use in barbecuing. Hey, any port in a storm). You can set the alarm to alert you if the temps go above/below the range you specify, and it uses a probe (I had to order a shorter one than the one pictured) that is going inside a water weasel on one of the incubator racks. Our old Spot Check temp probe will go in a water weasel on the other rack.

Next is a Govee Smart thermometer/Hygrometer. VERY accurate, the little unit goes inside the incubator and synchs to your smartphone--and tracks temp/humidity spikes and drops by hour, day, week and month.

 

Lastly, I got a new digital hygrometer, so I could have it on one shelf and the Govee on the other.

I even dismantled the ReptiPro in order to clean out dust/chick dander from its innards. Which was a good thing, as I didn't realize just how nasty it had gotten in there over the years! I took the back off to find this:

And...

When you can write 'Ick!' in the dust, you know it needs cleaning.

In the end, everything was thoroughly cleaned.

I've poured over my hatch records going back to the beginning of time. Read articles online hour after hour until my eyeballs are about to fall out & my brain is overstuffed on high altitude hatching. I came up with little that was new to me, which is good--but I think I figured out the cause of the chicks dying and have done everything I can to prevent it.

One thing about the chicks that died last year, was that they ALL died 4 days post-hatch, within a few hours of each other, and all displayed identical symptoms.

It's a red flag--a chick survives it's first 1-3 days living off the last of the egg yolk it absorbs just before hatching. It's why hatchery chicks survive 1-3 days of shipping w/no food or water. I suspect our incubation temps/humidity were off without us knowing it, which caused internal defects to form. I think this made it impossible for the chicks to process any food they ate post-hatch--and they weakened & died.

It would fit. The chicks did tend to walk like their gut bothered them...

When I calibrated everything this year, it turns out that the old hygrometer was reading 11% too humid & the Spot Check temperature 1 degree too cold! It's amazing we got anything to hatch last year.

Hopefully that's now under control. Hatching at high altitudes is already hard enough, there is an unavoidable ding to your hatch rate of 50% or so. No magic bullet for a great hatch at our altitude, but every little 'help' counts at 4800 feet!

Meanwhile, here are the eggs we'll choose from!

Ours (some we know are from certain hens):

And eggs from our local friend:

Getting these eggs was a whole 'nother mini-adventure that involved trying to drive out to his house the day after our area had a voluntary evacuation from flooding by the lastest in a series of Atmospheric River megastorms. Our friend is WAY out across the valley with no other houses within miles...

...so of course we got stuck in the mud.

We eventually got loose, but had to give up and go home. Our poor car--!

Kind friend met us in town the next day with the eggs.

So, we're as ready as we're gonna be! The eggs go into the incubator this Saturday, March 18th for a target hatch date of Easter weekend, April 8-9th. BUT--as usual, start checking our YouTube channel a day or so BEFORE that, as high altitude chicks tend to hatch early!

I'll post updates on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/chickam2008

When Chickam starts, you can watch it here--if you tune in and see EGGS instead of Jack, the hatch has begun! Click on the 'Notify Me' icon to get an alert from YouTube when we go live:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CteVAyCD2iY

Chickam Candidates!

On March 13th we set 36 eggs in the incubator, and at 13 days in, I candled them. We had 26 eggs with embryos, with another 2 eggs with shells too dark to be sure.

Three days before hatch, we moved the eggs to the bottom of the incubator, crossed our fingers and waited!

Now to see what we get! I'm especially curious about the large, white eggs--possibly from our white Leghorn hen, Boombox.

The Few, But Mighty!

Welp, this being a very strange year, it might as well affect Chickam, as well.

Out of the 36 eggs I set in our ReptiPro incubator ten days ago...only 10 have developed and show embryos. Weirdly, six of those eggs are ones we got from our neighbors, that had been refrigerated...I wasn't holding out much hope for those! An additional 6 eggs were too dark to tell if embryos were there, so I left them in the incubator...but time will tell, for those six.

For the rest, a whopping 13 were fertile yet never developed, with 5 more having damaged yolks. Only two eggs were infertile.

What does all this mean? Well, basically our hens and roos are doing their chicken thing and giving us strong-shelled, fertile eggs. WHY they never developed, not even for one day...is a mystery. The flock is healthy, and the ReptiPro incubator is working perfectly.

But...we'll take what we can get! On the plus side, with a small hatch comes the possibility that one of our broody hens can foster mama the chicks, provided we have a broody or two to choose from in two weeks. Right now we have several hens that are broody, so we'll see!

Onward to our hatch day of Saturday, April 11th!*


*Knowing our eggs, the actual hatch will start 1-2 days early tho, start checking our YouTube page on the 9th!

Chickam 2020 Is On!

Crappy scary human viruses shouldn't be allowed to spoil all your fun, or totally disrupt your traditions!

Today we set 36 eggs in our ReptiPro incubator. Incubation should take 21 days, and our planned hatch date is April 11th, the day before Easter...although like always, I'm sure the bantam eggs will hatch in 20 days instead of 21, like normal chickens. So I'd say start checking in on day 19 of incubation--April 9th--for updates.

Eight of the eggs were a gift from our kind neighbors down the street who have some white Leghorns and lovely, fluffy buff Brahmas...but I'm afraid they refrigerated the eggs, which likely killed the embryos.  It broke my heart, when they gave us the egg carton and it was cold. But what the heck, we'll try them anyway--so eggs numbered 1 through 8 are the neighbor's eggs. The other thing is that most of the eggs they gave us are large, white eggs--and buff Brahmas lay light brown/tan eggs.
We'll just see what we get, it'll be an adventure!

The rest of the eggs are from our flock, and in all sizes, shapes and colors--a mix of standard size and bantam. For daddys, we have Milton, our bantam Cochin/Belgian d'Uccle mix roo, Bacon, our tiny bantam roo whom I believe is a Quail D'Anvers (we got him at Tractor Supply last year so he's a bit of a mystery) and Rafiki (Rafe), our Russian Orloff roo that we got at a local poultry swap last year. None of our rooboys are big, even Rafe is on the small side.

 So pictured below are our 36 starters--I'll candle the eggs at 10 days in (March 31st) and remove any duds.

Other local folks around here that I contacted had no eggs to spare, as people are panic-buying eggs. Even when I offered to trade my eggs for theirs, they had none.
Another issue may be difficulty in getting used major appliance boxes for me to knock together a brooder box with, as I usually do. Since non-essential businesses here in Nevada have been ordered to close, the local appliance store we usually get boxes from may be closed for the duration. We may have to get creative...

Damned virus anyway, interfering with my chicken plans--!

As incubation progresses, I'll update our Chickam Twitter account: Chickam Twitter
and our Chickam YouTube channel--inactive until the hatch actually starts. If you tune in to our YouTube channel and see eggs, the hatch has begun!: Chickam YouTube Webcast

Right now we only have a couple of broody hens, all are bantams that we hatched last year so their mama quality is unknown. Hopefully some of the bigger girls will step up sometime in the next three weeks and we'll have a mama for the chicks--but usually we have too many chicks for a banty hen to successfully mother.

But dang it--whatever happens, there will be baby chicks here in three weeks! Hang in there, Chickam fans, baby chick fun is on it's way...

Lockdown!

Just put the eggs in Lockdown!  That means I moved them (and all the incubation apparatus) to the bottom of the Reptipro and did their final turn--after this we only open the incubator for a few minutes 5 times a day to give the eggs fresh air, no more turning the eggs--raised the humidity to 65% and increased the temperature setting on the ReptiPro so that the lower part of the incubator gets up to 99.5 degrees.

I placed a sheet of soft rubberized mesh on the bottom of the incubator, it cushions the eggs and will give the freshly-hatched chicks traction so they don't develop spraddle leg. On the right is the hygrometer--even though it displays both humidity and temperature, we use it only for the humidity reading--the temperature reading isn't accurate enough for the eggs. The small white dish with the marbles (to prevent chick drownings) holds the water that provides the humidity, and the weird sparkly pink Disney Princess water weasel toy with the white cord sticking out of it is a 'fake egg'--the cord holds the thermometer probe--one end is inserted into the water weasel, the other end is attached to the thermometer readout outside the Reptipro. The water weasel mimics an egg, and by inserting the probe into the inner pocket of the toy you get a reading of what the temperature is inside of an egg. This little trick gives you a much better hatch since inside the egg is the temperature you are concerned about!

Club Flamingo--the brooder box--is all ready to go!  Sadly, no broody hens right now, so no broody mama this year.

Now we wait until this Saturday, March 31st for the hatch...allowing, of course, for the bantam eggs which always like to hatch 1 or 2 days early! 

When the first egg pips (when the chick pecks out a tiny airhole) we will start the webcast here: Chickam

If you check the link and see EGGS, it means the hatch has begun! 
Tune in and suggest names for us to draw out of a hat as each chick hatches! The weirder, the better when it comes to names for chickens, naturally.

One Week To Go!

I did the final candling tonight and checked the eggs that I wasn't sure about a week ago...and yeah, they are duds--all except one, which has a dark green shell and *may* have a chick inside (but honestly I doubt it), so it stays in the ReptiPro.

Here are our final 16 eggs!  We for SURE have 15 embryos, the 'iffy' egg is #31, the large dark green egg on the lower right, in front.

We have quite the mix of itty bitty eggs and big honkin' ones in there. It's gonna be an interesting brooder box...

Here's how they break down:

3 Dark India Cornish Bantam eggs: #1, 6 and 7
7 Bantam Cochin eggs (possible Frizzles): #18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25
6 Eggs from our flock, a mix of standard and 1 bantam eggs: #26, 27, 29, 31, 37 and 39 (the tiny bantam egg)

Sadly, none of the Polish or heavy/Brahma eggs developed, and only one of the Dark India Cornish Bantams did. When I did the breakout tonight of the dud eggs, all of the shipped ones were scrambled inside. Boo on the USPS and their rough handling!

One more week (or a couple of days less for the bantams!) until the hatch! The eggs are starting to jiggle a wee bit when I talk to them when I'm doing the turns...the chicks hear me!

Yikes, I gotta go build that brooder box...

We Have Embryos!

Welp, it's been 10 days and time to check for embryos, so tonight I candled the 39 eggs in the ReptiPro!

...and we have embryos, yay!

Right now we have a total of 15 live, oh-so-squirmy (they do NOT dig the bright light of candling) embryos. Of those, 3 are Dark India Cornish Bantams, 7 are Bantam Cochins (with a possibility of Frizzles) and 5 are eggs from our flock--mostly larger eggs but there is one *tiny* banty egg that we added to the ReptiPro at the last minute.

Further, there are another 13 eggs that I'm *pretty* sure are duds--some have detached aircells--but I'm leaving them in the incubator for now and will recandle them in 4 days; I'll pull any duds at that time.

Eleven other eggs were duds for sure and had never developed, I pulled those. Of the duds, three had a broken yolk (shipped eggs, likely scrambled by the USPS), one was bad (one of ours, I suspect bacteria got in through the shell), one of ours was infertile, and the rest were fertile but never developed.  Three (all Dark India Cornish) had detached aircells, more victims of rough handling in shipping.

Twelve days to baby chicks!!!
...or a bit less, given that there are banty eggs in there, and the little buggers like to hatch at 19-20 days instead of the standard 21--!

Countdown To The 10th Anniversary Of Chickam!

Today I set eggs in our good ol' ReptiPro incubator, in three weeks there should be chicks!

This is a landmark year--2018 marks the 10th year we've been hosting Chickam, our 24/7 webcast of the hatch of baby chicks and their subsequent 8 weeks of life.  We've been hatching chicks since about 2001, but only started the webcast in 2008.

Since this is both a special year, and Easter (our traditional hatch day) falls on April 1st this time around, we decided to hatch some special breeds--time for some feathered silliness!

So I shopped around on the Internet, and in addition to hatching some of our own eggs I got some Dark India Cornish Rock Bantams, some Polish (possible Frizzles) and Brahma mixes and Bantam Cochin (more possible Frizzles) mixes.  With Frizzles you don't know at hatch if you have a Frizzle or not--you have to wait until real feathers start to come in to spot the tell-tale curl to the feathers.  And since wing feathers come in first on a baby chick, that's where any frizzling will show up first.

Here are the eggs!

First up, some of the shipped eggs.  On the right, the large white eggs at the bottom are the 3 Polish eggs--speckled, buff, silved laced and gold laced are the colors we may get. At the top right are the 5 Brahma/Heavy breed mix eggs, they are more of a who-knows-what-you'll-get variety.

On the left are the 8 bantam Cochin eggs.  The 7 eggs marked 'MF' have a MilleFleur coloration, the one marked 'CB' is a calico color.  The egg marked 'Wiggles' is one of ours that happened to be in the picture. We decided later that it was likely NOT laid by Wiggles (a Belgian d'Uccle) but is more likely to have been laid by Popcorn, who is a bantam Cochin mix hen.

Next are the 9 Dark India Cornish Bantam eggs.  The one at the top was sadly broken in shipping, so we ended up with 9 instead of 10.  I also candled the others to check for cracks and saw some detached air cells (a very bad thing) in some of the eggs, which points to rough handling in shipping. I'm hoping for the best with these...

Finally, 13 eggs from OUR girls!  We always include some of our own eggs since shipped eggs have a notoriously low hatch rate due to the inevitable rough treatment they receive from the US postal service.

The 'Wiggles' egg is in there, and not pictured is a last-minute addition of a tiny bantam egg, likely from one of the d'Uccle girls.  But I went for a cross-section of our flock in this collection--some large breeds, some bantams, and everything in between.

We have a total of 39 eggs that I started today in the incubator. In addition to each egg getting a number and a breed mark when I knew it (no breed marks for our eggs, 'I' for the Dark India Cornish, 'P' for Polish, 'B' for Brahma mix and 'CB' and 'MF' for the bantam Cochins) I marked an X on one side and a O on the other, and started them with the X side up. Over the next three weeks I will turn the eggs 5 times a day, from X side up to O side up at each turn.

The device at the top right is a hygrometer, is measures the humidity in the incubator, which needs to be 50% for the first 18 days, 65% for the final three days. The cord on the left leads to a thermometer outside the incubator--the probe for the thermometer is stuck inside a glitter pink Disney princess water weasel toy--the water weasel simulates an egg, the probe gets stuck inside the thing to get you an idea of the weather INSIDE an egg, giving you a better hatch! You want a reading of 99.5 degrees inside the eggs.  At the very bottom of the incubator is a dish with water in it to provide humidity--the marbles are just so when the chicks hatch, they don't soak themselves or drown in the water dish.  I could have added the marbles later on, but wanted to get everything up to temperature at the beginning and not have to mess with it later.  The thin black silicone mat on the floor of the incubator will give the hatched chicks needed traction for the few hours they are drying out in the incubator so that they don't develop Spraddle Leg.

Ten days from now, I'll candle each egg.  Eggs that haven't started to develop an embryo will get pulled from the incubator, those with developing embryos remain.  If an eggshell is too dark to see through when candled (like the dark green and dark brown eggs), they stay in the incubator.  Usually only about half of the shipped eggs develop at best, but we tend to get about an 80% or better development on our eggs.

Chicken eggs typically hatch after 21 days of incubation, with bantam eggs sometimes hatching 1-2 days early-so I suggest you check the UStream Chickam channel starting on March 29th.  If all goes well, Chickam will be the weekend of March 31st-April 1st!  The cam isn't started until the first egg pips, so if you tune in to the UStream channel linked above and see EGGS, it means the hatch has begun!

Fingers crossed for lots of embryos in 10 days and a bunch of little April Fools in 3 weeks!

Egg Candling Day!

Or night, to be more accurate.

Armed with my trusty LED desk lamp and a metal canning funnel turned upside-down over the thing, I was able to cup one hand around the eggs and use the other to gently rotate the egg until I could see how many potential chicks we have waiting in the wings.  The ReptiPro has been a darling, purring along and holding it's temperature and humidity beautifully.

I had one dozen Dark India Cornish eggs bought off ebay and shipped...and unfortunately, because of several different issues, will NOT be using this particular breeder again.  More on that later, but out of 12 eggs, I saw embryos in only 2, 6 were clear duds that never developed, and 4 others I was unsure of but gave the benefit of the doubt and returned to the incubator.  The 'unsure' ones I strongly suspect are duds with broken yolks, though.  We'll keep our fingers crossed.

Out of the 13 eggs from our hens, I saw embryos in 6, 6 I was unsure of (one may have quit, 5 others are too dark to candle positively but I think *do* have embryos), and 1 was a dud.

I will do a breakout on the 'dud' eggs to check for fertility, lack of freshness and other causes later on.

So right now we have 8 embryos for sure and 10 others that *might* have embryos!  I will candle again on day 17 (this Sunday) and remove any other eggs that have not progressed.  But I think I can safely say we will have about 13 chicks!


Now, back to the shipped eggs if you want to read the whole sad story...before I bid, I first contacted the seller weeks ahead of time and asked if he could ship the eggs within a certain date range so I could get them a few days before I planned on setting eggs.  No problem, he said.  So I went ahead and bid on one of his auctions and won it, sending him a message right away reminding him NOT to ship the eggs for another two weeks, as we had agreed.

A few days later (two weeks ahead of time), I was unpleasantly surprised to find a USPS box on my doorstep.  Not only that, but it was completely lacking any kind of 'Fragile' or 'Hatching Eggs, Do Not X-ray' stamp. Box kinda crunched on one end, but eggs packed well and no harm done.

Welp.

OK, contacted the seller, said I can't use these eggs in two weeks (every chicken breeder knows Rule #1:  you NEVER set old eggs to hatch). He said, sorry, he got mixed up. He also said that marking the package 'Fragile Do Not X-ray' would have made it 'suspicious' and subject to being opened and inspected (what do I care?)...he said the eggs should be 'fine'.

OK...contacted him again and said nope, I'm not gonna set 2 week old eggs, his mistake, so he needs to send a replacement shipment.

He said OK, but MADE ME PAY HIM ANOTHER 25 CENTS for him to print out a new shipping label before he'd do so!

Criminy.  OK, done.  Eggs shipped and received, box still not marked as 'Fragile' or 'Do Not X-ray'. *sigh...* But again, eggs packed well and seem in good condition.

Meanwhile my egg set day arrives and the new eggs and some of mine are started in the incubator, well and good.  I decided to do a breakout on the first shipment to check for fertility.

YIKES. Only 60-70% fertility.  Four of the eggs I opened were obviously very old and had started to rot--they hadn't gotten to the 'green and smelly' stage yet, but were clearly nearly there with weak yolks and foul, yellow whites with dark solids floating in them.  About 1/3 of the rest of the eggs were clearly not fresh and had started to turn with the yolk mottled and discolored, but the albumen as yet unaffected.  Not fresh--not candidates for hatching. To be fair, the eggs had good strong shells.

I took some pictures of what I'd found and sent them and an email to the seller to let him know...that was 11 days ago, no response yet.  It's really disappointing to run across a chicken breeder such as this, most are very proud of their eggs and would never send old eggs or a shipment that isn't clearly marked, 'Fertile Chicken Hatching Eggs--Please Handle With Care And Do Not X-Ray'.  It's dead standard marking for the outside of the box, and no one I know has every had an issue with it.  It's how I mark my egg shipments when I send out eggs.

So...that's my sad little chicken egg story.  Geez, I think I would have done better to take my money and throw it into the street...

RIP, Brand New ReptiPro Incubator!

So...with one week to go before hatch, my new damned ReptiPro 6000 incubator failed spectacularly. It had been having problems holding temperature, dropping to 97 or shooting up to 102, despite being set at 100 degrees. The temperature fluctuations were becoming more and more frequent until two days ago, when it stopped heating altogether and instead chose to start making weird, electronic, 'gonna kill you in your sleep' smells.

I'd already contacted the ReptiPro folks and unfortunately they are out of stock until mid-June. Ack!

Time for a work-around!

Her name is Sonic and she's a Golden Laced Giant Cochin, she is a hatchmate of Yoya's and luckily went broody about 3 weeks ago. The 5 eggs from the incubator are under her now, it's all up to her for the next week. The only other alternative is the old styro incubator, but I trust Sonic over it as long as she doesn't abandon the eggs. With the way the ReptiPro had been freaking out, I don't hold out much hope that any of the eggs will hatch, but we'll see.

The only other alternative is me walking around with eggs in my bra for the next week.

Sonic passed the acid test today when she emerged from the box to eat, drink & poop (broody hen poops rival skunks for sheer stink power). After a few minutes I gently redirected her to the box...she eyed it warily, but spotted the eggs...and after a minute of disapproving clucking, reentered the box to sit on the eggs.

Atta girl, Sonic! The ReptiPro may have a cool blue light, but MY unit features growling & fluffiness as standard equipment. Not to mention it's an automatic egg turner!

And YES, I emailed this goddamn pic to the ReptiPro guy.

Lockdown!

We've started the final three days! The brooder box is ready, as is the styrofoam incubator we'll have standing by as a chick-dryer-outer if we need it.

The eggs on the very bottom of the incubator are the current hatch. The eggs on the upper shelves are the next hatch, staggered for two weeks after this one.

The concentric rings are where I marked the progress of the air cells during incubation to make sure the eggs were on track. Usually I'd only do it 3-4 times, but with the new incubator I wanted to be extra cautious. The shot glass holds water to keep the humidity correct, and the little thing on the right is a hygrometer. The upper shelves have their own thermometer/hygrometer setup.

We've tested the cam and everything is as ready as it's going to get! When I did the final candling yesterday, I saw lively, squirmy chicks in all 15 of the eggs except two--these two may be late quitters, or merely fashionably late--I'm leaving them in the incubator to give them every chance. This morning one of the eggs peeped at my husband when he spoke to them, and wiggled energetically for me when I talked to them.

Incubating High Tech Style, I'm DONE Dinkin' Around!

So the new ReptiPro 6000 incubator has arrived, and is being tested!

It has a blue interior light so it's gonna be kind of a baby chick rave:

The old styrofoam incubators just weren't cutting it up here, and the other day while being tested the forced air 'bator started to fluctuate temperature wildly.

That did it. Time to go high-tech.

So in doing days and days of online research and picking the brains of various fellow chicken owners, the ReptiPro was clearly the incubator of choice--actually a huge Sportsman cabinet model capable of hatching out several hundred eggs at a time was the way to go, but seeing as how those start at around $700 for the cheapo model, the ReptiPro was the saner choice. Having a small cabinet model like this takes our ambient humidity out of the equation, and this unit recovers after having the door opened to correct temp & humidity very quickly.

In testing my hygrometers I discovered that my fancy digital one was low by 22 points and even the el crappo dial one was low by 5 points. Neither can be adjusted, so we took ourselves off to the store and got a new digital hygrometer, which is being calibrated now.

Each shelf can comfortably hold 16 standard size eggs, although some people I know pile a LOT more eggs on and even stack them! I think for our first whack at hatching with this thing we'll go with 32 eggs to start, a mix of standard size and bantam eggs. I'm doing a fertile egg swap with another lady here in town so we hope to have some mixed breed Wyandottes, Buttercups and Polish chicks, too.

Incubating with this 'bator calls for me changing up my incubation technique pretty radically--running a drier incubation, turning eggs 5 times a day rather than 2, continuing to open the door 5x a day for ventilation right up to hatch--no 'lockdown'--and moving just-hatched chicks to the old styro incubators to dry out and get strong before they go into the brooder box. We'll remove chicks as they hatch so that they don't raise incubator humidity too much.

This is quite a departure for me, but what I used to do does NOT work up here, so I've gotta take a leap of faith and try this!

One of last year's chicks, a Red Star named Zipper, is thinking about going broody, but I don't know what kind of mama she'd be as a first-year hen. We'll see when April 20th rolls around if we have any volunteer mamas. Chickam should be interesting if all goes well...