Chicks

[sheepdog 10]

We didn't get a garden this year, but I just got the incubater filled up last week, and hopefully I will get a good hatch this year. I have 95 eggs in it. I ran it several times last year, but only got one round with it this year. I hate to literally count my chickens before they hatch, but I am hoping for a real good live chick percentage this year since I just got one round of eggs in it. I have tried real hard to do everything right, from turning the eggs twice a day religously, and making sure everything was good and clean to start with, I even bleached the egg cartons I used to store the eggs in while I was waiting to gather enough to fill the incubator. So, hopefully I'll have a good hatch, and if everything else gets too expensive to buy, at least we will have chicken and apples!

[Ananya 0]

Hope your incubator help in yielding a really good number of chickens. If they really come out in good numbers then you would have a valuable food preserve at your home itselfconsidering eggs are a good source of animal-protein.I would have really loved to have such a wonderful source of getting eggs at my home as boiled egg at my breakfast table makes me really happy.In fact anything constituting eggs make me happy.

[AKUKUMATATA 0]

does your incubator produce steam? what's the weather like where you live? eggshells can be hard to break by chicks if there's no humidity in the air. get a VERY CLEAN water sprayer and spray the eggs once a day (If the weather is not humid already.) good luck with your eggs. getting the chicks is the easy part believe me. the hard part is get them through their first winter.

[demonboy1990 0]

i have a garden is seems all year round it gets cut one week by two week later it has grown back horrible it looks like a forrest,hope your chicks are doing ok sheepdog or if they have not hatched yet they will do ok, let us all know when they have hatched maybe post a few pictures.

[sheepdog 10]

The incubator itself does not make steam, but you have to keep shallow trays of water in it under the eggs that produce a fairly high humidity. When the chicks start to hatch humidity becomes critical, and you aren't supposed to open the incubator till they are done, but I can never keep myself from peeking, and of course, they often hatch over a period of several days, so if you don't take out the early birds they would starve before the hatch is done. Fortunatly, chicks can go for awhile without eating, that is why you can order baby chicks in the mail and get them to survive. They absorb the yolk just as they hatch, and can live off of it for awhile. Opening the incubator during the actual hatching causes the chicks to get shrink wraped, in other words, the tough layer that seperates the chick from the inside of the shell drys out and gets to hard for the chick to tear out of. But I keep a mister bottle handy when checking the incubator during this time and always mist the eggs before I put the top back on it. It works out ok that way. I got a little better than a 60% hatch rate this time. They tell me this is pretty good for a still air incubator. I lost 3 chicks the first night, they all crowded into one corner of the brooder box, by where the waterer was and managed to drown 3 of their silly selves. Lost a few more since them but still have about 50 chicks. Figure half about will be pullets (female) that I will keep for laying hens, so that still leaves me plenty of fried chicken dinners.