Adventures in Egg Hatching: Part 2

Since I last reported on our egg hatching progress there have been some tense and very exciting moments in our hatching process.  The first few days, life in the incubator was pretty quiet for our eggs.  The Brinsea incubator makes things so easy that there is very little daily up keep.  In order to keep moisture in the incubator there is a small reservoir that I check daily and add water to if necessary.  Other than doing that I pretty much just take a peek at the eggs a couple times a day, make sure the temp is holding steady and give the eggs a little pep talk.

Ella taking a morning peek at the eggs

Our incubator counts down from day 21 to egg hatch time.  On day 15 things got a little exciting for our eggs.  Early one morning our middle girl Emma decided that she needed to put on her winter coat, which had fallen off the coat rack and near the plug in that our incubator was plugged into.  I am sure you know where this story is going; while digging for her coat she also unplugged the incubator.  I really thought that I had it plugged into a very safe place.  Note to self:  there is no safe place when there is a two year old living in your home!  Thankfully it was not long and I check on the eggs and realized that they had been unplugged.  I quickly plugged them back in and all was well… we hoped! 

The very next day we had severe weather move through our area.  I woke up about 4:00 am in and realized that our power was out.  I fell back asleep and a little later I woke up and it hit me that our power was out and we had eggs in the incubator.  I hopped up and went to see what their status was.  The temp had dropped to 22.7 C, I thought for sure that we had lost our chicks.  About 8:00 am the power came back on and the incubator came on got back up to temp and kept the countdown and all my settings correct.  I was very pleased by this!  If the Brinsea incubator had not retained all of its settings we would have lost precious time trying to get everything all set up again.

  I searched the internet high and low to see if anyone else had dealt with a power outage while incubating and of course many had and most were very encouraging.  It seemed this was also the perfect time to take a look at my eggs to see what their progress had been made.  I don’t have an egg candling device so I used what resources I did have.. a bright flash light and a dark room. I very carefully took my egg out of the incubator and into our completely dark bathroom, I held the egg gently in my hand with the flashlight right under it.  After a little turning to find the right place I was so surprised to see perfect little veins and a dark spot in the center of the egg. (I could really only see through the lighter eggs.)   Of course I was worried that the power outage had killed our little chicks so I waited 3 days and candled them again.  This time not only could I see veins but also the shape of a little chick moving around in the egg.  Talk about exciting!!!  My oldest daughter Ella was completely amazed that we could see her chick through the egg and I was amazed too.  So for now we are thinking that our eggs survived the power outage.  What strong Chicken Scratch Poultry eggs we have! 

Our first time candling at 14 days.  You can see an nice dark spot and there are lots of veins but they are hard to see.

Three days later the chick is bigger and moving all around.  Sorry for the picture.. our little chick wouldn't hold still!

I have been doing my very best to keep the excitement level down for our growing chicks.  I think they have had enough excitement for one incubation.  What can I say though these chicks are hatching into a very exciting family!! 

Here is a video of our little chick moving all around.  Watch close or you will miss it!

Don’t forget to go over and checkout our friends at Brinsea!  They provided us with our incubator and are going to be sending one to a lucky winner at the end of our chicken hatch. Be sure and check back next week for our Adventures in hatching: Part 3.  I’ll be sharing more about our growing chicks and about how you can have a chance to win a Brinsea incubator.

Have you ever had a scare or misshape while hatching chicks? We would love to hear about your experiences, leave us a comment and tell us all about them!

Melissa