Adding more water.

This is where the chicks are at now and I can't believe that they're crammed in the egg like that. I've added more water today into the second trough the ("T" trough). To increase the humidity for the hatch. We've also removed one of the two red plastic caps to increase the oxygen flow because we're at high altitude and want to make sure the embryos have plenty of oxygen to exchange. In some places you want to be sure that there isn't too much moisture but up here it's so dry that we're not worried about that. Tomorrow I go pick up the feeders, water dispensors and wood chips for the chicks. The brooder guard, the brooder thermometer and our chick starter mix arrived today from McMurray Hatchery. I can't believe it's going to happen already. It's so exciting. As soon as it starts happening we'll post pictures! If you have kids this is a great site I found. It's hosted by the Sacremento Zoo and has so much information and great activities to do with the kids. Go check it out. http://www.saczoo.com/3_kids/17_eggs/_egg_develop.htm

2+ more days and counting!

Two + more days to go. I removed the automatic turner this morning, given that it was a little over the 18th day. I put the eggs in at 4pm on October 26th and figured it took at least 3-4 hours for the eggs to get up to temperature. I started counting from the 27th being day 1 of 21 putting the hatch date on the 16th of November. But figuring the hatch date from October 26th, November 15th would be the hatch date around 7pm - ish. I put some unprinted newspaper paper on the bottom of the incubator, but not to cover the entire thing. I wanted to make sure that there was plenty of space for the humidity to get to the eggs/ chicks. The chicks will need the paper to assist in standing and walking. I a surface is too slippery they can injure their legs easily. I laid the eggs on their sides and the narrow/ smaller end tilted down and it was hard to keep them from rolling around a bit. I have to do everything to keep from hovering over the incubator and watching for anything, a sudden movement of some sort. But minute after minute nothing moves. No pipping. 2 more days!!! What am I going to do? I just have to get out of the house as much as possible.

4 days left!!

We're busy getting ready for the chicks. With only 4 days left there's a lot to get done. I have already ordered my brooder heater and thermostat control unit from www.shopthecoop.com. From McMurray hatchery I ordered my cardboard brooder ring and thermometer. I've candled the eggs two more times and can't believe the rapid growth. The embryos are almost doubling in size every day. I'm having trouble keeping the incubator at 102F it keeps coming down and settling on 100F. Which is scary since everything I read says we may have a late hatch and there may be problems with the chicks. Tomorrow I remove the automatic turner and lay the eggs down on their sides. You do not turn the eggs in the last three days of the hatch! This can cause many problems. Pretty exciting! The kids ask everyday "how many more days"? They can't wait. The excitement is growing and growing. Even our house guest is totally excited!

The girls outside are still happy, frisky and laying!

Our First Three Egg Day!

Our Flock:

Today we had our first three egg day. All three girls are laying now! Sylvia and Penelope laid early this morning, before 10am and Victoria laid after noon. I'm still in shock. I never thought it would ever happen since it usually takes up to 25 hours for an egg to form. It's pretty exciting and I think I'm going to do some baking with them, since we have quite an accumulation. Over 10 eggs stockpiled since Friday morning.

The New Clutch:

I added more water today into the incubator since it was almost out. I guess I let it go too long with out checking, it's only been a couple of days though. It's very difficult to see the water well through the automatic turner. We candled the eggs today with a homemade candler. We made a cone with dark paper and left a 1" hole at one end and stuck our maglight flashlight in the other end. I put the eggs up to the end of the cone with the 1" hole and counted 10 out of the eighteen eggs fertilized and growing embryos. Which is more then I expected because some of the eggs are so tiny. We were only expecting the 12 eggs so we have more chickens then we expected. One of the eggs looks as if the embryo is sticking to the side of the egg shell so we'll most likely lose that one. Good site to check out for embryonic development is:

http://lancaster.unl.edu/4h/Embryology/EmbryoPhotos.htm

It's totally amazing that a fully formed chick starts to pip out after only 21 days. If you think about it, they're pretty evolved for such a short period of time. We bid and won on ebay on a different kind of coop to house the Bantams in. Like the eglu it has an attached run and the whole thing is enclosed and covered by a solid roof. The coop is also off the ground to protect against predators and from draft. There is a ramp that the chickens can walk up and down into the coop. My husband just wanted to combine all the chickens together, but this is a big no no. Salmon Favorelles are very docile so they tend to be picked on (literally) by other breeds and they're are a Bantam breed so they're about half the size of our other chickens. We want to keep every body healthy and happy.

We have a 40 gallon tank that we will put the chicks in as a brooder and when they've grown out of it, we will use a cardboard barrier (which can be found on McMurray Hatcheries website). We're waiting for the omelt people to start importing their large coop and run the "cube". It houses about 10 birds. It's pretty sweet and colorful! Go check it out at www.omlet.uk

This is where we should be now:

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: