Sigh...

I just candled about 1/3 of the eggs in each of the incubators--they are at about 15 days. Some were clear, others showed developed but possibly dead embryos, others had mysterious dark masses that may/may not be chicks, while still others were too darned dark-shelled to see through!

And just because Mother Nature does LOVE her little jokes on me, I now have SIX broody banty hens out in the coop, all dying to hatch eggs and obviously MUCH better at it than me.

Bleah, I've been hand-turning eggs for nearly 6 weeks now non-stop. SOMETHING BETTER HATCH.

A Milestone Has Been Reached...

...for the kid is now wearing her first training bra.

I've already warned her about how miserable little boys can be about snapping your goddamned bra strap, over and over again.

The first thing she did was run out and tell the chickens about her new bra. She also can't wait to tell daddy when he comes home.

I think his head just might explode. Either that or he'll start oiling up the guns.

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!

Failure...

So the hatch was a 100% failure, boo. :( We are going to try again, after conferring with other chicken people. The incubator will be outfitted with a new electronic thermostat and a forced-air fan unit, and relocated back in the kitchen. I find it hard to believe that moving the thing about 8 feet would make such a total difference, but...well...we DID get some chicks hatch last year when we did that!

Still time to hatch chicks for the kids' Science Fair project, so all is good, still.

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!

Hens On The Hoof!

Chickam is up and running, now showing our flock! Click here and scroll to the bottom of the page:

http://jackshenhouse.com/VSChickLinksCHICKAM.htm

We'll be using UStream and Justintv. Justintv will have chat, UStream will not.

The cam will change to the incubator on March 22nd, 24 hours before the scheduled hatch on March 23rd.

Annnnnd...They're Off!

Twenty-one days and counting till Chickam2009!

Here are this years' 50 contenders for 'Who Will Hatch First'!

The blue thing is a Water Weasel, which holds the probe for the digital thermometer--it acts as an artificial egg and is a way for us to gauge the temp INSIDE the eggs, which makes for a much more accurate reading. The thing with the digital readout on the right is a hygrometer, which measures humidity--it has to be at a certain levels at various times during the hatch. It has a thermometer, too, but it isn't as accurate as the digital one with the probe. The eggs are numbered so that you can cheer on your favorite!

The eggs are due to hatch on March 23rd, but Chickam will start the day before, on March 22nd in order to catch any early hatches. You can see and hear it live soon here--two spots in case one or the other goes down:

No chat, kid-safe:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chickam2008

With moderated chat but we advise adult supervision since we can't control what other people say, but we will be answering questions here:
http://www.justin.tv/chickam2008

How do hens manage this without all these gadgets?!