Getting the flock out of here - a diary of a crazy chicken man

Sally Sunshine said:

the display case! I so wish I could see them hatch darn it!!! will have Bernie stuck to the top of it! ha ha ha

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I have a feeling Bernie will be sleeping on top of it on Sunday night.

Day 19 ... a day to second guess yourself

The incubation is normally out your hands by now

Here are the instructions I sent to Bernie this Friday Evening LA time (Sat lunch time in the Philippines)


Good morning Bernie and Analou. On Sunday morning put all the chicken eggs into the large flat incubator. Only the turkey peacock guinea fowl and goose eggs should remain in the big new incubator. Use the baskets to put the eggs in. The eggs with no markings place in one basket. BO BBR GS in one basket ,BLU BLM LO HRIR in one basket AUS BANTAM ,AND & K in one basket.

Do not add any water to the incubator. We will try without. It is important you do not open the incubator unless you have trouble for the first day. The eggs should start to hatch Sunday afternoon. The bantam and GS should start first. Pipping is when they make the first hole. zipping is when they are cracking the egg around in a circle. Hatched means out of the egg.

Please give me reports on numbers zipping and hatched ever two hours. Please make sure the incubator is away from ants.

Today please clean foam incubator with soap and water then with bleach. Later we will use it for the goose eggs.

Please work on the water pipe trench today.

Exciting times!!!!

can't wait, can't wait!!

Bens-Hens said:

Exciting times!!!!

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eggciting is an understatement. I hate day 18-19.

Knowing there is nothing else that we could do does not alleviate the anxiety.

I am looking at room size dehumidifiers in the 20 pint range on craigslist and seeing how I could incorporate one into the megabator with am extension.
hopefully though I will not need to because I will hatch all 160+ eggs. yeah right.

I was just thinking and realized that three weeks from now I will be back on the farm with my wife and kids as well as our poultry.

I continue to be amazed at how the older I get, the faster time moves. Mrs Oz and the kids will meet me at the airport in Manila and take the same flight back to Bacolod.

As usual, I have a mountain of projects I have bestowed upon myself but this trip will be a little different as I will not have my car there. Planning is critical as I need to make sure that everything I need, I have with me when we leave the city. A mid visit soiree to the city is logistically not possible.

The fence project supplies are basically OK. I need to make sure I get some stainless steel threaded rods to use on the fence. I have contacted a company in Bacolod by email but I have not heard from them. Though I am sure I can get the product there, the time required to go from place to place may sway me to get them here. Delays in flights could cost me a whole day to shopping for supplies but 60 feet of 3/8 rod will certainly add to my luggage weight.

The coops are a different story. I need to weight till Monday to see what I need to build. The current plan is a row house with eight apartments. The first six will be elevated coops with egg boxes. The last two will be basically sheds with roosts for the turkeys and the peafowl. I have done the drawings to make sure we put a net on the top of the guinea fowl and peafowl apartments. Depending on the hatch rates, I may end up putting the peafowl and guineas in the same apartment.

With both the above projects, I will initiate them and build the first one or two segments as prototypes for Bernie and his helpers to follow.

The final project is to get the municipal water hooked up. This is a big thing for Cauayan. The residents of the barrios have had communal wells with hand pumps up until now. They fill five gallon containers and carry them back to their one or two room houses. Just keeping a family of five in water was quite a task. Bernie is dropping the pipe into the 150m trench from the meter to the pump house. I will make the connections into our water supply network once I get there. Explaining where and how to complete the project with language barriers over a phone will not work.

All this and July has an average of 15 inches of rain and its the height of the monsoon.

Talk about the weather…..

As I wrote in my last soliloquy, its monsoon season. The seasons are divided into wet and dry. On the map below (stolen without permission from wikipedia), we are on the most Southern island that has red and blue portions – and right on the division between the two. Our average annual rain fall is about 2 meters or 75 inches. July and August are the wettest months with 14-17 rainy days each. Those days a good for an average of an inch of rain each. Tropical downpours are something to behold. We have had more than 2 inches fall in an hour. Fortunately we are not affected by flash flooding but there are a couple of low points on the road that will be impassable for a few hours following torrential rains. The driest months are March and April. They are also the hottest. The schools have their summer vacation during this time.






The Philippines covers a large area in latitude but is all tropical. We are located just 9.5 degrees North of the Equator. With each degree of latitude being a little less than 69 miles, we are 650 miles from the Southern Hemisphere. Tropical storms plague the Philippines as they do the coasts of Northern Australia and the South Eastern seaboard of the USA. Cyclones in Oz, Hurricanes in the USA or Typhoons in SE Asia normally form in the doldrums and normally 10 degrees or further away from the equator with occasional storms forming between 5 and 10 degrees. Of the 70+ storms that have been recorded in the past 3 years by the Philippines weather watchers, just one as passed close enough to us to cause any concern. That being said we are protected by a large area of mountains in the usual path of a typhoon and all we felt was wind and rain with no damage. Of course, in nature there are exceptions to the rule so we are vigilant in tracking them and when I renovated our house I built a room with concrete walls and ceiling and a steel door. It’s our stock room/panic room.

The hottest time of the year is during the dry season. February is the most pleasant time to go to the Philippines. Temps are cooler, the rain is slight, hotels are empty and airfares are cheap. A sub-$1000 flight from the west coast of USA and less than $500 from Sydney is possible. By the end of March the local tourist season is in full bloom. When that slows, the Americans are on vacation and airfares jump 50% or more. The first few weeks of July they are $1900-2800 for economy! October – November, although more rainy that Feb, are also great times to be in the Philippines from a cost perspective. The other killer time from a cost point is Christmas. I have seen last minute economy fares at $3800. I was lucky I got a frequent flier ticket in business class that year – by pure fluke.

wow.... 75 inches per year.

Just Wow...... Are you going to put in wood or bamboo floors in the runs. So they can get up off the ground when they go outside?

deb

perchie.girl said:

wow.... 75 inches per year.

Just Wow...... Are you going to put in wood or bamboo floors in the runs. So they can get up off the ground when they go outside?

deb

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the coop will be off the ground and thus providing a covered portion under the coop. We have sand as our soil so we dont get water pooling or mud. The floors will be split bamboo slats placed as close as possible to each other with rice hulls as littler.

The turkeys will not have a raised coop - more of a shed with a sand floor.