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Very true about the sneak attacks, haha! But there's one hen that's still bigger than the boys (they are only 20 weeks old right now) and she still kicks their little butts whenever they try anything with her. But just the same, I put eggs from all the girls in the incubator, just in case.
I hope to be! I set the eggs yesterday afternoon, so I guess technically today was day 1. That makes day 21 a Sunday, which is pushing it a little bit if the chicks aren't on time. But I might be able to take that Monday off work to hang out with the peepers.
I am pleased with the incubator so far, we'll see how the hatch goes! This is the new one I just bought. Had a scare earlier today, actually. I have two incubators - one is an old hovabator a friend gave to me because she didn't need it anymore, and the one in the photo is the new brinsea one I just bought. I'd arranged to go down to vnsseed's farm and pick up some hatching eggs tomorrow. I've also been saving eggs from my girls all week. My plan was to set the eggs from vnsseed in the new incubator and some from my own girls in the old incubator and run them at the same time, so they'd all be hatching about the same day.
Well, I got eager and went ahead and set my own eggs in the old hovabator yesterday. I'd spent a week or more fiddling with the old one, testing it with a max/min thermometer and hygrometer to make sure it was going to run well. Everything seemed fine, ran fine all last night after I set eggs. Then this evening I opened up the lid to turn the eggs manually and the thing died. I thought I'd just accidentally unplugged it, but nope. Checked the plug, no light, no fan, no heat, just dead. I spent all of three minutes trying to fix it before I just gave up on it. I didn't want the eggs to cool too much. The new incubator was already sitting out, set up and ready to go because I was expecting to put eggs in it tomorrow. I fired it up, moved all the eggs over, and we're off and running.
So I guess the fact that I set my own eggs early may have saved them, because if I'd set them all at the same time I would have had no backup when the old bator failed. I mean, I know they were only about a day and a half into incubation and they are entirely replaceable because they are from my own hens, but just the same it would have been sad to abandon them! I had to make other arrangements with vnsseed, but fortunately he's a nice guy.
And the takeaway message? Make sure you have a backup!!! Whew!
