Justin Rhodes' "Great American Farm Tour" has really inspired us to get serious about our production, across the board. As I wrote about yesterday, Jack the Ripper set us back a bit with the great Chicken-apocalypse of 2017 by murdering a dozen chickens.
Life goes on, and I loaded up the incubator with another 27 eggs, and they started hatching out 20 days later, by the end of today, after following instructions this time, we had 23 hatchlings out of the 27 eggs. Can't say enough good things about the incubator that Andrea bought me for Father's Day, it seems bullet proof. It helps that we have 3 roosters that are taking care of the hens.
Lessons learned: 1. Mark on a calendar when hatch is going to happen. 2. Don't open the lid unless you're have to add water to increase humidity. 4. A soaked paper towel is better for steady humidity than simply adding water. 5. You can help the chicks out of their shells after a couple of hours and still have them live. You just have to go slow and be mindful of not hurting the chick. The chick has to get itself out of the egg, you just have to help clear a path. If you attempt to pull the chick out you're likely to kill it.
We're going to try to increase the numbers of eggs we're producing and try to produce some extra laying hens to sell as well, so the incubator is probably going to be running non-stop for the next several months. I'll let you know how it goes.
You can find the incubator here: on Amazon.
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