A valuable lesson.

[Red Fan]

Hip Hip Hurray! Pat made it! Thank you all for your support. I'm happy to report that with your help, my newbie attempts to kill this chick have been thwarted. I'll be a chicken rancher yet!

A little more video. I made it pretty short, I wanted to get on here and let you all know how it turned out.

 

[maus]

WOOOOHOOOOO!!!!
YAY! Congrats to you and Pat!
Ive been following this thread. I am so happy for the little fuzzball!

 

[laughingllama75]

ee I am so happy! Pat sure is a looker.........can't wait to see her up and running. Nothing like living vicariously through others, while your eggs are in the Bator

I'm only on day 7. Waaaghhhh!!!!!!

 

[Rte.66_chicks]

That made my morning! Congrats on a beautiful baby!

 

[hinkjc]

Yay Pat..I knew you could do it!

Jody

 

[wegotchickens]

That is soooo cool!

Please keep us posted on how she's doing. I would LOVE to see a fluffy pic of her later.

Gotta let you know, I am just about to start incubating. My teenage daughter isn't very into it, but she came up as I was reading about Pat. I showed her the pictures and told her what was going on. She asked more questions and showed more interest in our own hatching project after that. It was cool and made me happy. I can't wait to tell her Pat is fine!!

 

[horsejody]

AWESOME!!!!!!

 

[tnkinhunting]

That's great - glad Pat arrived!

 

[Red Fan]

wegotchickens I'll try to post some fluffy cute picks later. Pat still hasn't dried out yet. I'm not sure I'll be able to tell them apart when they're dry. I now have four chicks that are Reds and three that are from the RIR father and BSL mother. One of the latter is black the other two are yellow. I'll at least be able to narrow it down to two.

My wife was like your daughter. It's easy to be indifferent when you're looking at a bunch of eggs in what seems like an expensive oversized heated egg carton. It's quite another matter when you witness the miracle of birth (or hatch as the case may be.) She couldn't care less until we found that first live chick a day early. On day 21 she got to see the second chick hatch and she giggled like a little girl. I had to wipe out the audio before I could post

because she was embarrassed by it.

I've got two more eggs left and it's now day 23. It's not looking good for them. I've started collecting for my next hatch which I plan to start monday. I thought I'd try to hatch some maran eggs so I could have a few hens laying those cool dark eggs. I went on ebay and 12 eggs were at $76.00. I decided to stick to hatching my own for a while.

I'm going to try and get the fan kit and install it. This hatch I got 7 out of 22. The humidity was a little low especially on day 19 and 20 and I opened the incubater way too much. I'll wait until day 10 to candle the first time. Obviously I won't try to decide when the right time is for the chicks to come out. I'm expecting better results. Plus spring is in the air so hopefully my rooster Zeke is more in the mood.

(Zeke because he's ready for a fight until you take a step towards him.) Nine of the first batch were infertile. Given the temperature here at the time I thought such a low number was pretty impressive.

Well, I have to go back to bed now. My weekend is over and I have to go back to work tonight to finance my chicken ranch. Forgive me when the posts thin out. I don't have much time left in the day when I'm working. Have fun and good luck all.

 

[wegotchickens]

I certainly understand about life getting busy! If you can't get pics, that's fine. You did such a good job with the other ones! And even if you get a pic that may or may not be Pat, seeing a fuzzy baby after the slime dries would be cool. Our current peeps were ordered last spring, not hatched, so she knows nothing about the process. But since she showed interest in this thread I feel like I've won something special, you know?
You can describe the process, but a pciture really does say something more. And a live thread is something my teen truly understands

DH claimed to not be interested in the incubation process, too. But now he's hooking me up a webcam so we can check on their progress from work

This will be our first time, setting the eggs tonight or tomorrow. We're hoping the cats don't decide to nap on the nice warm lid...