A few months ago Mark started reading everything possible about chickens and decided to take the plunge. He got an incubator online, tested it and found the motor to rotate the eggs did not work, so the company just sent him a new incubator saying there was no need to send the broken one back. So, he was lucky to get two incubators for the price of one.
At the end of February we went down the street to a little poultry hobby farm. Mark liked what he saw and the next week we picked up 48 fertilized eggs for $4 a dozen. The eggs came from ISA Brown hens and three different kinds of roosters. Mark had the incubator ready and waiting when we got home. We filled it with eggs and realized the motor to rotate the eggs on the new incubator did not work with the weight of the eggs, so Mark made a system for us to quickly rotate the egg tray by hand three times a day. He turned the eggs in the morning and night and Timmy and I turned them during the day.
Mark had a camera on the incubator controls so that he could monitor the temperature and the humidity at any time. He was so diligent about keeping it right that he would often ask me to make adjustments during the day. I loved how he took the responsibility of those 48 little eggs so seriously.
After one week in the incubator, Mark taught the boys how to candle the eggs. With the lights off he used a special flashlight to shine on them. By looking to see veins or no veins etc, we could tell at that point if the egg was fertilized or had died. A "yoker" was not fertilized, a "quitter" only survived a few days, and a "winner" was looking good for development. After going through all 48, Brian and Timmy got really good at telling which it was. That first week we ended up with 7 "yokers" which were never fertilized and only one 1 "quitter." So we had 40 good eggs then. My cousin Rich was staying with us that night so we broke open the quitter and got a great look at what a chick a few days developed looks like. It was actually very interesting.
The next week we candled the eggs again with some Hsiao cousins. The eggs all looked good and we could see the chicks moving in their eggs! We were getting so excited at this point!
On day 18 of incubation (March 9th), we pencil marked the location of the air bubbles within the eggs and Mark prepared everything for hatching. He removed the egg rotator trays and transferred half of the eggs from one incubator to the other to give them some space for hatching. He placed the air bubble facing up to give the chicks a better chance at getting air at hatching time. Then we waited while watching the humidity and the eggs very carefully. We were looking for the very first pips, or little pecks, in the shells which was the signal to raise the humidity levels significantly to help those chickies not get stuck to their shells.
The first pip was noticed by myself and Timmy on day 20 (March 11th) during the day. I was so excited I called Mark to tell him his babies were coming! We put more water in to up the humidity and watched and waited excitedly! We counted about 7 eggs with pips by that evening. It didn't look like anything was going to happen soon, so I put the kids to bed.
That night somewhere in the 9:00 hour one big chick started zipping (pecking in a circle) around his egg meaning he was ready to arrive!
Mark and I were beyond excited now! We just sat there staring through the milky plastic and taking turns checking through the one hole in the side of the incubator that we could view clearly that one egg.
Finally at about 10:00 p.m. our first little chick made his way into this world! It was so amazing I almost woke up the boys, but I knew with 40 eggs they would have plenty of opportunity to watch some hatch.
Mark named him Spartacus. We watched him for a goodly long while and then I went to bed while Mark stayed up late to watch one more chick hatch. By morning when the boys woke there were 9 baby chicks hatched!
No comments:
Post a Comment