Our New Feathered Friend

Early Saturday morning was a special day for our family. One of our chicks hatched out of its egg!

The night before, I could see the egg moving and hear little peeps. We also noticed a small crack in the side of the egg. Bleary-eyed, the girls crowded around and peered into the incubator's observation windows.

There was so much excitement and lots of, "I cannot see, move over, let me loooook!" The chick was in the egg still, but well on its way to getting out. The chick would peep and they would go bonkers! "Did you hear that mama? The chick is peeping!" The girls' eyes were like saucers, taking it all in. They would clap their hands and giggle. Good times! We let the chick stay in the incubator most of the day while it dried, and we were hoping it would encourage the other one to come out. Sadly, our second chick never hatched, so we have one chick from our first incubation.

We were certain that the second chick didn't make it, because the next day the egg smelled really bad and there was no movement. Unfortunately, the rest of our eggs didn't get fertilized, or maybe something else happened in the incubation process. As we're newbies at this, I hoped maybe I was wrong when we candled. It was clear that there was nothing but a yolk, but I kept them in there just in case I was wrong.

The evening before, Derek and I set up the brooder for the chick. We had a cardboard container from the starter kit for chicks from Tractor Supply, but I had seen a better way to house them. I had a large plastic storage container used to store clothes for the kids in the closet. I've been downsizing, and a bin worth of clothes went off to charity. I lined it with paper towels. The towels are necessary so the chick can get good footing. I also read it's a better choice than wood shavings to start because the chicks cannot differentiate between food and wood shavings and may accidentally eat some of the shavings. I'll replace the towels with wood shavings in a couple of weeks.

The University of Minnesota has good information about the hatching and brooding process for small batches of chicks. We filled the feeder with the supplied chick starter (again from the Tractor Supply kit) and I used distilled water for the water feeder. I'm worried about our well water and just want to give the little gal (or guy) the best start. I sprinkled a little of the feed on the paper towels near the feeder, to make it easy for the chick to find.

I attached the heat lamp to a cast iron plant stand I have. The literature I read said to get the light about 18" above the brooder. I was shooting for a temperature of 95 degrees F. I checked the temperature with the thermometer from the incubator and laid it on the floor of the brooder. It was right around 100 degrees. I adjusted the lamp up a few more inches until I was around 95 degrees F. Other ways to tell if your temperature is off is to watch the chick. If it stays away from the light, it might be too hot, so adjust the lamp further way. If the chick constantly stays under the light, it might be too cold, and you will want to move the lamp closer. Make sure your brooder is away from cold drafts and protect the chicks from your pets. We are laying a window screen over top of the brooder for added protection.

It would have been nice to have a friend or two for the little chick, but we are giving him or her lots of attention. The girls talk sweetly to the chick and sing it songs. Ara loves to tell it, "I'm your mama and I'm going to take good care of you." It took a while for the chick to dry out, but it seems to be doing really well and really bonding with the girls. As you can see from the pictures, the little chick is dearly loved and off to a great start.

We want to raise our chicks organically, but decided to start with medicated feed to give our chick a good start. We'll switch over to organic feed next month. I also took the time to disinfect the incubator, so I hope we can start one more small batch. That way, our little chick will have a friend for the long winter months ahead.

 

Candling with an Ova Scope

The Brinsea Ova Scope came a couple of weeks ago! We opened it up, followed the supplied directions and checked out our eggs that very day.

I'm a little worried now. Out of our 12 eggs, I can definitely see two chicks moving around ... but nothing in the others. They have been incubating for 11 days. Could it really be that only two out of the 12 made it?

The good news is I can see the air sacs in almost all of them. Maybe I'm wrong about the eggs, so I will persevere by keeping them in the incubator. I may have a mess on my hands if one or two explode, but I hope that won't happen and we'll get more than two chicks.

I found a very useful site that provides videos and pictures of candling chicken eggs at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It's perfectly all right to take the eggs out of the incubator, but not usually longer than 30 minutes. Make sure your hands are clean when handling them. You don't want to clog the pores in the egg shell.

The girls thoroughly enjoyed seeing the chicks moving around in the egg! They kept vying for a turn. Over and over again they peeked inside the scope to see the chick wiggling around inside its egg. It was pretty neat to see how excited the girls are getting about the chicks.

Egg Perched on the Ova Scope

There were two eggs we threw out after candling because we knew absolutely nothing was going on inside. Also, they both had a slight crack in the side we hadn't noticed before. Derek cracked them open back by our creek and there was no embryo growth in either.

I was also able to plop my camera upon the scope to get a video of the chick moving around in the egg:

Incubating the Chicks!

It's been a while since our last blog entry, but an exciting new chapter in the Furry household unfurls as I write! The countdown has begun. In roughly 14 days, we will hear the peeping of little chicks. (The gestation period for chicken eggs is 21 days.)

We have an incubator all set up and we now have eggs! We went to our local farmer's market last week to arrange a pick up of our dozen Delaware eggs at the rock bottom price of $2.50 from our friends Mike and Chris Chester at Always Somethin' Farm. They were kind enough to let us borrow a great little book called "A Guide to Better Hatching" by Janet Stromberg. It's out of print, but you may be able to locate a used copy online. I found another excellent site that was created by the University of Illinois Extension. It gives helpful information explaining the operation for a still air incubator (excellent for us, as we do not have instructions for the one we are borrowing from our aunt). Our incubator has an automatic egg turner too. Our aunt has used it many times in her classroom over the years as a first-grade teacher. We received a new thermometer before using it because they lose there accuracy over time, and temperature is an essential part of incubating correctly.

Our aunt gave us some great pointers so we could get the incubator setup correctly:

• A well (called the moisture channel) inside the bottom of the incubator holds water to keep the eggs moist.
• Each egg nestles into cradles, and the eggs need to be placed skinny point down. The airspace in the egg is at the largest and widest part of the egg.
• Two windows allow for checking the temperature, which we set as close to 99.5 degrees as possible. Temperatures vary according to the type of incubator you have, so do the research before using your particular incubator.

Another pointer our aunt gave us was to watch for excessive moisture buildup on the windows. If we see that, we pull one of the red vent plugs to air the incubator out a little. Our eggs are currently rocking away, and we're so excited to see what hatches.

We also picked up a chick starter kit at Tractor Supply for about $20. It has a waterer and food feeder, a small bag of chicken feed starter, a box to put the chicks in for safe transport, a little cardboard corral for them to safely play outside (supervised) and some coupons for chicken-related products at the store. We also picked up a heat lamp and light bulb for it.

We are getting to the point were we can check the eggs and toss out the bad ones. I purchased an Ova Scope after reading Jennifer Sartell's awesome blog post reviewing the Brinsea Ova Scope. I scoured the Internet for a good deal on the scope. It's a large expense at $70 with shipping, but I think the girls will really enjoy being able to see their chickens growing inside the eggs and we will use it again. It will also be fun to share with our friends and family when the eggs are hatching too. We'll have a blog for you about that in the next week or two and a video of the chicks inside their eggs (we hope)!

We still have no coop, but we'll report on that, too, as we press forward. A couple of weeks ago, we received some great freebies for the coop from my godfather, which I'll post about soon. He also helped us with the coop design and supply list. We should be able to make our coop, which includes a fenced-in run, for about $100. Not too shabby. I'll be keeping track of the receipts as we buy our supplies to see how close we come to hitting the mark!