This is our Homemade stryobator and Project Manager
Okay a little background we live in southern mn and lucky enough to have 5 acreas to play with. The neighbors don't fuss, we have a pretty good size garden and mamma cans most summer. I truck for a local seed company (soybean and corn) to the farmers in the winter and early spring and haul out of the fields in the fall when not trucking I work on seed farm with easy hours in the summer. (how cool is that down time in the summer!!)
Early spring gets me going every year between starting seedling and all. We have done meat chickens a couple times in the past and always have had pretty good luck with them but they are just that meat. So this year I got on the internet thinking I'd order the birds a little cheaper than buying them down at the local feed store or TFS and came out on this site. Wow what a cool bunch of people and a plethora of ideas to feul ones head. $ is always short (ha when isn't it) with the help from all the ideas and post from everyone we came up with the stryobator. (wish it was my idea but no such luck) couple light bulbs and fan from an old pc all I had to buy was a thermostat from lowells. Well I did have that $20 give card I got from X-mas from the boss deal!!!
Next was what kind of chickens now you might think I'm being picky but I wanted to go with dual and of course the girls wanted the cute and the boy just didn't care (typical teen) so we set out in search and came up with blue plymouth rock and the girls just to keep them happy sizzle/frizzle/silkie yeah thats just what dad wanted to do is build 2 coops instead of one large. Lucky for me I have an old grainery that is just asking me to do something with it. A little insulating and dividing add a run walla instant chicken coop for all the birds I care to raise. I got a little time and one thumb that isn't bruised. We just free ranged the meat birds and at night they all came to the grainery for shelter and food/water. The dog aka Dixie won't allow anything on the farm that isn't been introduced to her by the kids so the predator problem might be a hawk or what not but knock knock we haven't had a problem with that yet but we are going to take precautions for our future girls.
Well its the first week of april and the stryobator was up and running holding perfect 99.5 (yes little victory dance) ordered our eggs off ebay. Okay I know some of you old timers are going well there's problem 1 yep. We got such a good deal (my humble op) that we decided lets go for broke and ordered a dozen white leghorns also. Not that I don't have room lol well the first 2 dozen arrive just as describe mailman brought them right up to house not a broken one in the bunch so you ask whats the problem well its been 1 week and just got notice that my leghorns are finally getting shipped hmmmm. fast same day shipping del 3/4 days a week later. we'll leave you a nice doing business with ya feedback when they arrive.(sarcasm). Other eggs been in the bator now for 5 days and the temp is fluxing 2/3 degrees humidty is steady at 45%. worry worry decided well when the leghorns arrive we'll just go no turn the last week or what is left can't really do much else and building another bator just seems excessive for a dozen eggs and hate the thought of just tossing them. We will be candling this weekend and I'll update my page with results if anyone is interested.
Going on week 2 with the stryobator things seem to be going along ok.....(shrug) We tried to candle and out of 26 24 look like they are doing something. Yeah but that seems alittle too good so we're calling it a wishful thinking on a couple but really all in all I hope it is accurate.
got stuck in ND monday 4/18 flat ground 11 inches of snow and calling for more snow all week long great...
