What started as a single mom's simple desire for her kids to be away from the city and to be surrounded by more trees has turned into the drive to have a more self sufficient life-style
We knew that the guinea were laying eggs somewhere, but we hadn't stumbled upon the nest yet.
Then the oldest told me that he saw the nest by the big tree. A few hours later when I was going outside to check on the chickens I heard a guinea go crazy across the yard and an orange stray tabby cat came from the area the guinea was trying to hurry away from.
I shared with some people that I wish I could get some more hatching eggs, and a fellow chicken farmer offered to give me some eggs just so she could test the fertility of them.
We already have too many birds, I know this, but it's addicting, and with our recent loss to the foxes (two this week), I think I just want to be safe and have birds laying like crazy this spring and summer.
So I accepted. We met up today and she gave me 18 eggs.
They are pure bred Dominiques, pure-bred Buff Orpingtons (we actually bought a few chicks from her last year and the three that survived the foxes are gorgeous), a pure-bred leghorn, and two pure-bred Polish eggs. I'm not a fan of the Polish birds because they look funny, but I know it wouldn't be hard to find someone to take them if they hatch.
I decided to throw all of my green eggs that we got from the coop today (and three that we got in the last few days and have been sitting on the counter) into the incubator as well, in the hopes that maybe the chicks would grow up to lay olive eggs, which are pretty popular among the chicken crowds.
That's 10 of our eggs plus 18 of hers, which makes for a very full incubator. I'll candle them in a few days to see if there are signs of life. This is so exciting. :)
We ended up having 12 chicks hatch, which is amazing. We only had 2 bad eggs out of the 14 Silver Laced Wyandottes which I think is great odds. All of the New Hampshire eggs were bad. I did send an email to the seller and she said that she would send me more in the spring if I paid for the shipping. I'm not sure if I want to do it all over again with the same seller, so we will see.
Yesterday morning, the incubator went on "lock down." For the final three days of incubating the humidity needs to be increased and the temperature needs to remain constant. Chicks can stay in the incubator for 24 hours after they've hatched and if they need to be removed at 24 hours because there are other eggs hatching, it needs to be done quickly.
The eggs aren't due to hatch until Friday morning and I thought they would hatch from Friday morning until Saturday during the day since they won't all hatch at the same time.
This evening, I started dinner and then went over to check the humidity and temperatures, which I tend to do several times a day.
I immediately saw a pip!
I screamed!
Then I heard it peep and I screamed again!
I searched the eggs as best as I could looking for signs of other pips and found more!
The egg on the left has a pip at the top right edge
There is a pip next to the number 2 on the 3 egg from the top
There are six eggs in all that have pipped that we can see.
Pipping is where the chick will break it's beak through the shell and create a hole.
I even took video of the eggs because you can hear them peeping at us and the eggs will rock around. It is so amazing!
I am hoping that they will hatch before I fall asleep because I'd hate to miss it! :)
The first video is the first egg that we saw that had pipped. It is shaking all over and just a few seconds into the clip you can hear it peeping.
In the second video I set the camera down on top of the incubator and you can hear peeping and see two eggs shaking around.
We did go downstairs to see how Norma Jean was doing with her 4 eggs and I couldn't hear anything and she still looks completely mad at us.
We candled the eggs again two nights ago and this morning it was time to take the eggs off the egg turner. They're suppose to stop turning for the last three days before they hatch so that the chicks can get lined up and ready to pip and hatch.
I candled them this morning as I took them off the turner and set them in the incubator again and I saw signs of life in all of the Silver Laced Wyandottes, which is great news. There were three New Hampshire eggs that were clearly bad so I pulled them out and one New Hampshire egg that I think is bad but I'm not completely sure, so I left it in the incubator but off to the side.
It won't be cool to have all of the New Hampshire eggs be bad, I'm wondering if they were even fertile when they were sent to us.
The best part is that I got a video of a candling and you can see movement inside the egg. Watch this clip and pay careful attention at about the six second mark. I hope other people squeal with excitement like I did.
Apparently I've been candling wrong. Tonight, we candled a few more eggs to see how things were going after after a couple eggs, I decided to try the light coming from a different angle.
It was amazing. We could see a mass and movement in nearly every egg! I was squealing like a little kid!
Of the 14 eggs that are in the incubator, we saw signs of life in all but three of them. One of them was completely stuck in the egg turned and I was scared to break it by pulling it free and two of them were almost see through.
I decided to run out to the coop to check on the eggs under the hen and I snapped pictures of those eggs. Four of the six showed signs of life.
This is a bad egg
This is amazing! It was so cool to see them moving inside the shells! Now I feel like I need to do a lot of research on what I need to do to keep them alive until hatching.
When I woke up this morning I checked the incubator and it was only at 80 degrees and 80% humidity. I got some of the water out and turned the heat up before running off to the gym. When I came home an hour later the temperature was finally almost right! 99 degrees and 60% humidity meant I just needed to bring the humidity down.
But then I looked at the second thermometer that was inside the incubator. It was well over 100 degrees! The humidty gauge was obviously broken on this one, but which thermometer was right?!
The oldest text me to say the eggs had arrived today. I believe my response used the word "CAREFULLY" several times when I told him where to put the boxes.
When I got home there were two boxes waiting for me. One of them was decorated so cute.
I have promised myself several times that I would not get more birds unless they were purebred birds. I did a little research and thinking and decided that having chicks now, in the winter, would be a good idea because when they are ready to start laying in 6 months, it will be spring. The problem is that our eggs are "barnyard mixes" and local breeders have let their birds all roam together for the winter and so their eggs aren't pure bred either.
Someone recommended that I buy some on Ebay, and that is how I found myself in a bidding war for various chicken eggs tonight. I haven't been on ebay in at least 8 years!
We won 6 (or more) New Hampshire eggs from a German bloodline. These were two of the pictures that the sellers had posted.
And we won 11 (or more) Silver Laced Wynadotte eggs from the Foley bloodline. These were the pictures they had posted.
I can only hope that they all arrive in one piece, that I am smart enough to handle them carefully, and that between the broody hen and the incubator that we have a good hatch rate. If we can get just half of them to survive that would be about 9 chickens, and so maybe 4 hens to add to the flock.
I'm also planning to pick up some other chicks from a local seller next weekend.
