Ten Days To Go!

We're on schedule for our annual Chickam live web broadcast of our baby chick hatch set for Saturday, April 20th! Just in case, we suggest checking the UStream Chickam page starting two days before that (April 18th) in case the little stinkers are early, which has happened in the past. It'll be here--if you tune in and see eggs, that means the hatch is starting! http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chickam2008
We started with 40 eggs, and had 15 develop into healthy embryos!

We got 15 eggs from a local family, the breeds include light Brahmas, Golden Polish, Leghorn and Sicillian Buttercups, some will be mixes. Twelve of those eggs developed along with three eggs from our Belgian d'Uccle chickens. We had set some of our large breed eggs, but due to the fact that I hadn't foreseen hugely winterized fluffy butts on both our roo and the girls...none of those eggs developed and turned out not to be fertile!

So last week our Giant Cochin roo and all the big girls each got a VERY undignified butt feather trim. They were properly outraged at me trimming their nether regions but at least now, when I do an egg breakout all or nearly all of the large breed eggs are fertile, so it worked! I plan on setting a few large breed eggs in the incubator this Saturday, if they work out they should hatch two weeks after the first group, around May 4.

We also currently have a total of three broody hens, one of which may be elected to be mama for the Chickam chicks. One of the broodies is our gray Giant Cochin hen Yoya, here showing off how fierce and fluffy she can be...

 

...the other two are tiny but fierce bantam Belgian d'Uccles, just fate having a chuckle at our expense, I'll wager. We'll see if any of these ladies works out!

Broody Hen Detente

So now we have three broody hens.

Wiggles the gray mottled Belgian d'Uccle bantam is still going strong and really getting in to it. Yoya the gray Giant Cochin has decided to stick with it (for now) and Colonel, another chick from last year, has decided to brood. Colonel is one of the MilleFleur d'Uccle bantams.

Yesterday evening Yoya and Colonel apparantly teamed up to oust poor tiny Wiggles from her eggs, which PISSED HER OFF. I was out there passing out dandelion greens when Wiggles ran up to me, clucking rapid-fire, grabbing my pant leg and pulling me towards the coop.

OK, gotta go see what tiny angry hen wants. I walk in that direction and she sprints ahead of me, growling and clucking all the way, stopping in front of HER nest box and staring in.

Uh oh. I check it and find Yoya and Colonel.  I reach in to pet them, scritch their heads a bit...

But I take too long to suit Hitler-in-a-hen. Outraged pacing, extra-large fluffing up and full-on loud, *angry* bucawking starts at my feet--clearly this is, 'Mom, they took my nest. No fair! Make 'em give it baaack, NOW!' The Belgian Time Bomb is about to reach DEFCON 1.

Well, those hens ain't moving and Wiggles is clearly ramping up to bring the hammer down for a bantam Shock-And-Awe campaign. Time to head this off.

I end up taking one of the eggs from under Yoya and setting it in the next nest box over and showing it to Wiggles...

She stares into the new nest box for a minute, then reluctantly decides that this is an acceptable compromise and slowly heads in to sit on it.

All is quiet again, for now...

Happy Easter!

Bloop was only mildly wowed by the weird colored eggs.

He displayed much more horrified fascination with the light up, squishy rubber chick from the kid's basket. When shown a patently fake neon, two-tone iridescent plastic egg he immediately went into, 'An egg--! Ooh! By the way, look, I'm really good at finding cool places to nest!' mode. Silly rooboy.

Also, the Easter Bunny has a decidedly evil streak when it comes to coloring and hiding eggs:

GO!

We're off!

A total of 40 eggs were started in our new ReptiPro 6000 incubator this morning, if all goes well they should hatch Saturday, April 20th. There are 15 that I got from a local family in a fertile hatching egg trade, these breeds include light Brahma, Golden Polish and some mixed breed Polish, Buttercup, Silver Laced Wyandotte and Leghorn birds.

The remaining 25 eggs are from our hens.


The gray stuff along the front of each rack is some weatherstripping to keep eggs from rolling out.

I'd tried to line the racks with wire, but it ended up holding too much heat and making the temps go haywire, so I removed it.

I got a new hygrometer, in the back, top left. The purple thing is the water weasel which holds the temp probe, it simulates what the temp is inside an egg which is what you want. Dud eggs will be removed as incuabtion progresses.

All of the eggs have been numbered and look good. The weird round tracing on the large end of the eggs are the outline of the air cell--I'm changing my incubating technique radically and in addition to turning the eggs by hand 5 times a day (I have no life for the next 18 days) and candling them on days 7, 14 and 18 to make sure that they are losing the proper amount of weight (which is moisture--13% over 21 days), and will trace the new outline of the air cells on the eggs at that time--it'll end up looking a bit like the rings of a cut section of tree trunk. In addition I'll be weighing each rack of eggs every 3-4 days to make sure they are losing the correct percentage of weight. Between weighing the eggs and candling, you get a very good indication of how the eggs are doing--if the air cell is looking too large, the humidity is too low, if it is to small, the humidity too high.

So the hatch SHOULD be Saturday, April 20th. But given past years, the little buggers may well be a bit early or late according to Mother Nature's whim. If you go to the UStream Chickam page and see EGGS, it means the hatch is on!

The plan is for the ReptiPro to hatch the chicks, which will then immediately be removed to our old forced air styrofoam incubator to dry out & get strong. I'm going to try and get at least one of our girls to go broody so that she can take over the chicks once they are in the brooder box.

We will be testing the cam for a few minutes a couple of days prior to hatch just to make sure everything's working. We may also put the cam out in the yard with the adult chickens, our back yard is nearing completion and we may be allowing the chickens out of the run and into it for the first time.

Marching Forward...

Rounding the far turn and entering the home stretch with the back yard! We're down to the last bank of juniper/cypress plants. This batch is harboring more big rocks than the others, and just as much trash. But be gone they eventually will be, although we're trying to salvage some of the cypress plants as cover for the chickens for now.

The ones on the left have been partially cleaned up and shaped. Today we found more rotting dog toys, several balls, a large yellow plastic dish and a child's sweatshirt, plus a metric ton of trash.

Also, I made a fertile egg trade with a local lady and got these lovelies!

I gave her some Belgian d'Uccle, Americauna, Giant Cochin, Brahma, Barred Rock and New Hampshire eggs. She has a mixed flock like ours, with Light Brahma and Golden Polish roos running with Sicilian Buttercup, Silver Laced Wyandotte, Rhode Island Red, Leghorn, Golden Polish, Light Brahma and Orpington hens. They go into the incubator along with our hen's eggs on Saturday!

Yay for more chickens with silly doodads on their heads!

Call 'Em As You See 'Em...

Finally, a feed store with the guts to call chickens what they REALLY are, VELOCIRAPTORS!:

Actually, it was a toy for the kid, but it still gave me a giggle since we've bought chicks from this place before.

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...