setting eggs tonight!! anyone else? - Page 77

LaynaDon - that sounds like a great sale for a bator are you getting a turner also?  Are you going to hatch more even if they aren't for customers?  

Calichick -those are cute fuzzies, were the eggs from your hens or did you purchase them?  

 I'm almost on day 14, technically tomorrow, but I'm going to do my second candle tonight for the Easter hatch because I'll go into lockdown Wed. night and candle again then.

Anyone else on here doing the Easter hatch?  

Oh, I need to post some pics of the three chicks I have left from the first hatch, from the beginning of this thread.  For some reason we lost one of the chicks at a week old.  One of the blacks.  So, we have a black one and to interestingly colored light multi brown chicks.  The two light chicks were the chipmunk colored ones when they hatched.  I took their foster mom out on Wed. as they are 6 weeks old and could not all fit under her anymore.  I'll try to get pics tomorrow.

My mom commented tonight during chores that we had enough chickens.  I know that she knows I have 26 eggs in the bator currently.  Maybe she thinks they will majically disappear or something?  Not sure where that came from.  We have 35 in the layer flock including the rooster, 3 on lone out to a neighbor , two in with my show rooster to keep him happy, 3 show birds and my rooster, and the three chicks from the first hatch.  In a month or so we will get fryers, 15-25, but they won't be around long .  I also have an order coming in of Speckled Sussex BQ/SQ chicks anytime in the next 0-3 weeks .  I ordered 10 chicks and a friend ordered SQ/ BQ RIR from the same guy.  I will keep the chicks until the next weekend when she will pick hers up.  

Maybe she said that we have enough chickens because the barn fridge is overflowing with eggs!!!  Our regular customers are buying as usual but the girls are going like crazy! 

I'm a little paranoid about the temp and humidity in the bator so have one reg. thermometer and two with humidity meters on them.  The two dual ones have staid at 101-98 but the other one has spiked up to 106 more than once!   So, I'm thinking as long as you were not over 101 or 106 for too long you should be ok.  How hot is it under a hen?  It should be about 100-106!  A chicken runs as just over 106 normally.  I know my bator is  a still air but that just seams really weird.   I have turned my heat down very slowly over the weekend and I have it ranging now from 98-104.  Based on the readings previously I should be 98-102 from my trial run.

Did my 14 day candle tonight because I had help so actually 15 days.  But I also put mine in between 9 and midnight on the 17th.  Better than what I first thought from the first candle.    I pulled two clear and one blood ring.  The blood ring was from one I purchased and was shipped across the U.S. and the two clear were from our flock.  Guess the rooster can't service 34 ladies all by himself.    So, out of 26 I'm down to 23 but after my first hatch of mostly clears this feels really good.  I even had some move for me.  Now I just hope they don't hatch too early because the temp was high!