Welcome to Our Flock!

Welcome to our Flock!

We wanted to track the incubation and the (hopefully) hatching of our clutch (don't count your chickens before they hatch) sorry I couldn't resist! We also wanted to provide information from our experience which hopefully someone can use and gain from. I've found a lot of information on the net but not from personal experience so we wanted to try to fill that gap a bit.

First off a little information about our flock. We live in Colorado - in the high country and started this summer with three hens which we got from a friend. They were still young - grown but not laying yet, I belive they're called pullets. Our girls live in an pink eglu which we purchased from omlet (www.omlet.us). I'm a chef and had read about the eglu and keeping urban chickens in Gourmet magazine years ago. It was something that I had always wanted to do but never had the space to do it. So long story short, in our attempt to go as green as possible, we started growing our own veggies. This last summer we put in a greenhouse and with it, started having an extensive infestation of grasshoppers and slugs (yuck!). They eat EVERYTHING!


We've had a composter for a couple of years but we needed some kind of natural pest control, the next logical step, to me (the man took some convincing) was to get some chickens to naturally balance our garden. The girls are awesome, even our dog thinks so (we have a 93lb akita rottie mix). It took some training on his part but he's doing spectacular with them. We named our girls Victoria, Penelope (2 Barred Plymouth Rock hens) and Sylvia (an Australorp). The girls are so much softer then we ever imagined. Victoria is the most tame and she follows me around the garden waiting for me to over turn a rock or two hopefully awaiting to enjoy some slugs. They are hilarious. The children love them. We started getting eggs two weeks ago and it is still so amazing when I open up the eglu and there's an egg sitting there. A small gift but a large treasure. I made a huge batch of banana bread with our first weeks worth of eggs. The family enjoyed the bread immensely.

Our Salmon Faverolles: We received our eggs on Wednesday afternoon via fed ex after being purchased from ebay of all places. I finally resolved to purchase our eggs on ebay because every where I had been searching had been sold out for the season. We also didn't want 25 chicks because we don't have enough space for that many chickens. All the hatcheries I looked at and the private breeders would not send less then 25 chicks at a time, because the chicks need to keep each other warm during their travels. We decided on Bantam Salmon Faverolles because of everything I've read about them, but mostly because of their good and affectionate nature. The fact that their damn cute is a total bonus! This breed was also a good option because of their capability to withstand colder climates (due to their feathered feet).

Check them out:

www.omlet.us/breeds/breeds.php?breed_type=Chickens&breed=Faverolle
www.ansi.okstate.edu/poultry/chickens/

Today I set up our Hovabator with the automatic egg turner. I started around 11am and waited and waited for hours for the temperature to stabilize before adding the tempered eggs (temper to room temperature 70F before placing in the incubator). Our breeder sent them in an egg carton each egg individually wrapped in paper towel (for extra protection) we received 18 eggs when we only ordered 12 (very nice of her!) Since we have a still air model we set it at 102F (with a circulator you go with a lower temperature 100F). I had been storing the eggs in the coldest room of the house (low 60's high 50's). I hadn't realized that we could store the eggs for up to 2 weeks without incubating. Found a ton of information on the internet mostly on university sites. This is a good one: www.msstate.edu/dept/poultry/hatch.htm#care So the eggs went in at approximately 4pm and we'll keep our fingers crossed.

Here are some pictures I found of Salmon Favorelles: