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

Brooder House - Move In Day

 
 
This weekend was a busy time of moving into the brooder house.  It's been a long time coming but we finally did it.  There is still work to be done like paint and insulation.  Moving was a lot of work.  Here's a peek inside of what it was like moving approximately 300 chicks.

 

The Floor has been painted, sink installed, running water and electricity now we're all set.

 

 

The first brooder cage is moved in.

 

 

The wheels are put back on.  This is our young farm hand helping.  He's a hard worker!

 

 

The next brooder is moved in sections with chicks still inside.  See all the little heads hanging out.

 

 

The brooder cage is re stacked and screwed back together.

 

 

Automatic waterers are hooked up.

 

 

Time for all of these guys to move back into there brooder cage.  It's been a great day and a lot of work has been accomplished.

 

 

Adventures in egg hatching part 1- with Melissa

Summer is upon us and we have some exciting things happening in our home!  When Aunt Angie and I started talking about working on the blog together we discussed how she would love if I raised some of her chicks and could share about all the fun we had with them.  More recently she shared with me that her good friends over at  Brinsea had very generously sent her an incubator to try hatching chicks out of.  While I was a little apprehensive about trying to hatch chicks with such a busy home we decided that this would be a good opportunity for me to "get my feet wet".

The incubator that Brinsea sent us is the Mini Advance High Performance egg incubator.  It holds 7 eggs and turns them automatically for me.  (Let's face the facts... I have three small children if the incubator does not turn them, they probably are not going to get turned like they should be.)  When we opened the box and I pulled out the instructions I was a little intimidated.  There seemed to be a lot of information, once I started reading the instructions it all made sense and I was able to set it up with no problems.

Beautiful eggs!

My girls are very excited about having our own chickens!  They helped put the eggs in, and have been keeping tabs on them each day.  My oldest daughter Ella was convinced I told her it would only take three days to hatch our eggs.  What I actually said was three weeks. She has probably asked about 50 times if the eggs will hatch today, tomorrow, in a little while etc.  I count it quite an achievement that we put the eggs in the incubator with none getting busted.  My middle daughter Emma has lightening fast hands and not a gentle bone in her body.  As she was putting her egg in I was having flashbacks of egg dyeing at Easter.  Egg dye splashing everywhere and busted eggs!  Oh my!  She managed to put her egg in ever so slowly.  Mommy was proud!  I think she will do great with the chicks.  Now we are anxiously awaiting their arrival!

I just love this little hand!

Up close quality inspection

If all of that was not exciting enough for you listen to this news!  Not only did our friends at  Brinsea give us an incubator to use they will also be sending one to a lucky person at the end of this hatching experience.  As I share the progress of our egg hatching I will also share how you can have a chance to win that incubator.  Be sure and go check out  Brinsea's web page.  They have everything you need for hatching and raising  chickens and most any other bird.  Thanks again to them for helping us go on this egg hatching adventure!

If you want to be updated on the latest news about our hatching and our incubator giveaway become a follower and our updates will be emailed to you.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Melissa

And The Winner Is!!

WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER

Well not really a chicken dinner but the lucky winner of the cute set of chicken towels is, drum

 roll please......

 

 

NICHELLE

I don't know Nichelle's last name but I will message her.

 

 

Thanks so much for everyone who left us such nice comments, we love hearing from you!  We like to know someone is listening out there.  Stay tuned for the next giveaway....

 

Giveaway - Sign Up To Win

We will be choosing a winner Friday May 31 for the Kitchen Towels.  To be a winner of this cute set of towels you need to like Chicken Scratch Poultry on Facebook and become a follower of the Blog.  To become a follower go to the right hand side of the blog and click the Join this site with Google Friend Connect button.  Then you'll know each time we update the blog or announce the winner of the giveaway.  You have until 12:00 a.m. May 31 to get your name in the drawing.  These cute chicken towels will look great in any kitchen.

 

Sorry the eggs are not part of the giveaway, we'll do that another time...

Good Luck!

Planting Strawberries In An Old Chicken Feeder

I have always wanted to grow strawberries though never had much luck with them. So here I go again, I'm giving it another try.  I've seen people using old chicken feeders to grow herbs and flowers.  I got to thinking, I have an old feeder in a junk pile.  It's not in great shape and has some holes and is missing the grate on the top, but I think it will work fine for what I want to do with it.  When we moved to this old farm we inherited a lot of old junk with the place.  The old saying one man's junk is another man's treasure is very true.  I love junk, rusty, raggedy, peeling, and crackling, the older the better.  I like to re purpose and reuse.  When I asked Larry to help me pull the chicken feeder out of the junk pile, he gives me that look (you girls know the look) what do want with that old thing?  We bent the feeder back into shape, put a new leg on one side and I was ready to begin.

 

  First I began by getting the dirt ready to put in the feeder. I got the wheel barrow and dumped in a bag of potting soil I had sitting around, some composted chicken manure and a little sand, I mixed that all up with a shovel.

 

We drilled a few small holes in the bottom of the feeder to allow the water to run out and filled it with the dirt mixture.

 

Next I put in the strawberry plants.

 

 

Covered them with the dirt and watered each one.

 

 

I added straw to the finished product, what's a strawberry without straw.

 

 

 

While I was planting the strawberries. I had the Black Copper Marans free ranging.  They are so nosy, they can't hardly wait for me to finish so they can check it all out.

 

 

I don't know if the strawberries will do well in the old chicken feeder, but if the little bloom is any indication I'll at least get 1 berry.

 

 Oh well if the strawberries don't do well I'll try herbs.  It does look cute sitting on the porch of the brooder shed.  I hope to get this shed painted soon so imagine it being red...

What good ole junk do you have sitting around that you can re purpose?
Have a Great Day!
Angie

Thank You and a Giveaway!

Good morning friends!  Today we are going to have a little giveaway.  We're so thankful for all the support we have received since starting our blog and we thought we would giveaway a small gift of gratitude.

To enter to win this very cute dish towel set (Don't you just love the chicken towels?) all you have to do is like Chicken Scratch Poultry on facebook and become a follower of the blog.  To do this just look for the join this site with Google friend connect button on the right hand side of the blog page and enter your email.  This way you will know each time we update the blog.  If you do each of these then leave us a comment. We will pick a winner next Friday at noon! When trying to leave a comment, if you don't have a gmail or other user name select anonymous. 

Thanks again for all of the support!  Hope you have wonderful long weekend!

 

Sorry but the basket of eggs does not come with the towels.

US address only.