August Hatch-A-Long

[calichicken]

waiting for chickie babies.

LOL..me too!!

tomorrow is day 21 with 3 eggs in the bator!

I picked up 4 bantam babies I am going to sneak under my poor broody Peep that lost her baby. She is still sitting and calling for her baby so I am hoping she accepts them and FINALLY gets to ba a momma

 

[Bryce243]

Will a hen just go broody or can u get them to go broody

 

[hamzaahvalli]

bryce243- a hen will only become broody due to hormonal changes. As i learnt the hard way, i doubt any hen will become broody even if you lock it up in a room with a dozen eggs. However, there are stuff you can do to encourage a hen to go broody such a nice, quiet and dark place. Good nesting material and most importantly letting the eggs accumulate. As for now, i am wodering what i will do with ten extra eggs i will remove from my only broody hen. Good luck with your hatch.

 

[Bryce243]

Ok thanks I hope I will have a broody hen so I can watch little chicks walking around and I think my coop is peaceful

 

[darkbluespace]

Will a hen just go broody or can u get them to go broody

I never had a broody chicken till this summer when I became obsessed with incubating eggs, I think she was feeling my vibe ; )
I put plastic eggs in the nest boxes to encourage them to lay there and she went broody on them.

 

[WendyF]

Day 18 lockdown has begun. I only have 4 eggs I am sure are still alive. I couldn't tell with 11 more that I kept (too scared to throw them away, very scared of keeping them

). One had a detached air cell & looked totally clear, so I did an eggtopsy & it was a scrambled egg with no development. DH has anxiety over the chance of 15 more babies...I keep reassuring him that we should expect less than a 50% hatch rate with our shipped eggs which have been through so much. It's kind of funny reassuring him that I think so many won't hatch & crossing my fingers that I wasn't wrong about the 11 iffies & don't end up with an incubator explosion...

...Plus I REALLY want at least 1 hen of all the 7 types of chickens I ordered

. We worked all week on our 'Happy Hen Hut'. We have 3 walls framed in, 1 partially framed, and the exterior of one up & painted. Just need to cut in the vent & pop door on that wall then we can butt it up against our run. We have enough coop space for 16 hens & enough run space for 10 with our one completed run. We are adding another one on the other side of the coop once it's finished. We hope to have 100 square feet on that run, also. Um, I think we're over $1,000 into chickens!!!

 

[darkbluespace]

I had problems with my homemade incubator also. It would have random temp spikes that caused me to order a hovabator 1602N during middle of a hatch. I picked the hovabator up on Ebay for around $40 and finished the hatch in it. The hovabator works pretty well and was easy to clean up after the hatch. It also holds a pretty constant temperature with it located in a house with central A/C, so I don't have big temperature swings in the room it is located in. BTW the homemade incubator is working much better now since I switched from a bi-metal to a wafer thermostat. Now it maintains less than 1 degree of temp variance.

I just saw one on ebay for $35 with free shipping, that is so tempting... not that I need another incubator at this point! Someone should really snap that up!!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hova-Bator-...712?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27e942e078

 

[Bryce243]

The eggs I am incubating are shipped and only 8 out of 27 didn't develop

 

[darkbluespace]

Day 18 lockdown has begun. I only have 4 eggs I am sure are still alive. I couldn't tell with 11 more that I kept (too scared to throw them away, very scared of keeping them

). One had a detached air cell & looked totally clear, so I did an eggtopsy & it was a scrambled egg with no development. DH has anxiety over the chance of 15 more babies...I keep reassuring him that we should expect less than a 50% hatch rate with our shipped eggs which have been through so much. It's kind of funny reassuring him that I think so many won't hatch & crossing my fingers that I wasn't wrong about the 11 iffies & don't end up with an incubator explosion...

...Plus I REALLY want at least 1 hen of all the 7 types of chickens I ordered

. We worked all week on our 'Happy Hen Hut'. We have 3 walls framed in, 1 partially framed, and the exterior of one up & painted. Just need to cut in the vent & pop door on that wall then we can butt it up against our run. We have enough coop space for 16 hens & enough run space for 10 with our one completed run. We are adding another one on the other side of the coop once it's finished. We hope to have 100 square feet on that run, also. Um, I think we're over $1,000 into chickens!!!

Well, I hope they ALL hatch : ) You can figure out what to do with them afterward!! Keep us updated!! Nice job on the hen hut!

 

[Tazbeaux]

The eggs I am incubating are shipped and only 8 out of 27 didn't develop

That's pretty good for shipped eggs, I have had awful luck with shipped eggs myself. What breed are they?