Lol, sometimes it is warmer in my fridge than it is in the main house.
Just managed my first walk out to the chooks , since getting home , the sun is shining and everyone seems to survived our son and my girlfriend. ( feeders by default ).
Bringing in eggs is the far safer option.
Yeah that only contains oregano. No amprolium which is also a thiamine B1 inhibitor.
No matter how airtight your container is , after 2 weeks any added minerals and vitamins begin to deteriorate . We are guilty of holding over chick starter from previous hatches but best to buy in smaller quantities than take the risk.
There are definatly risks with eggs as well. I've only ever bought or will buy from someone known to have good bio security measures in place and a good healthy flock. It's one reason I've persevered with the breeder I have rather than just grabbing some eggs off gumtree.
In my case her stock actually has better genetics than my existing ones so it's improving rather than the opposite and really any genetics faults risk is no higher than is in your existing birds or the rooster you will buy as I doubt you got a genetic work up on those too?
Councils issues with roosters is the noise. You can always try a no crow collar, a friend of my sisters is having good results so far. You just have to be prepared to get rid of it if someone complains or the collar doesn't work long term.
As for the weird stuff That's a bit of a worry. Obviously someone has decided to start playing silly buggers in your neighbourhood.
If it's a hard wired smoke alarm it will go off "I believe" because it's lost it's power connection as a warning there could be a fire causing an electrical outage.
@RodneyRooster. People candle constantly out of curiosity not any actual need. You only need to candle once around 7-10 days to get rid of any clear eggs, eggs with a blood ring or eggs that started then quit. They can be your exploders and stinkers after a few weeks.
You can then candle again on day 18 as you remove them from their cradles and lay them in the bottom of the incubator ready for lockdown and hatching a few days later. Again you are looking for anything that has obviously stopped developing earlier somewhere along the way and is dead. A lot of the seasoned incubators don't even do this second candle I believe. I'm going to mark my air sack at this last candle so I can see it's pipping in the right spot but only because I know I've got a dodgy air cell.
Any other candling is pure curiosity and serves no purpose but to quench that ;-) and possibly introduce bacteria from your hands
There is also a school of thought that has constant candling, weighing and marking of air cells all the way through. I don't "think" any of our very successful hatchers in this thread use that method??
.
