Confessions of a City Slicker

[flowerfaeiry]

Be positive!!! Chickens are very durable, you will be surprised how many WILL hatch!!!

 

[mortie]

My bator has thrown me for a loop for the first time by spiking up to 103 while I was at my son's basketball game for an hour. Nice one, LG! I'll be keeping an eagle eye on that thing for the rest of the evening to make sure it settles. I did disturb it shortly before I left so hopefully it was just trying to get back to where it wants to be. This is the first time it's been anything other than 100 in a week.

 

[lazy gardener]

Don't be surprised if you get some temp spikes, in fact, be looking for them. I think, at least in my situation with my particular thermostat and my management, when I put the humidity up for lock down, it either messed with the reliability of the thermometer, or it messed with the thermostat it'self... or I jumped in to micromanage. The last 3 days were accompanied by wild temp swings as I tried to get things in synch again. I also noticed some temp spikes around day 7, perhaps due to increased chick metabolic activity. also, beware of pet curiosity as you enter lock down. My cats were extremely curious, especially during the last 3 days. I'm sure they could detect egg movement and sounds long before I could.

 

[mortie]

Yeah I am an idiot. I will be the first person to advise not freaking out about a little temp spike and to not touch the thermostat and what did I do??? I tried to make a feather light adjustment and something slipped and I knocked it way off. Now I am really going to have to babysit it to make sure it gets dialed back in again.

Reminder to self.

DONT

TOUCH

THE THERMOSTAT

I knew better and I did it anyway.

I had been expecting some temp swings but the thing had been holding rock steady for a week before the eggs went in and for 24 hours after.

I opened it to shuffle the eggs around a little bit. Is that not necessary with a forced air bator?

 

[lazy gardener]

With my home made incubator, I did have to move the eggs around. There were still spots that had temp variation, so I made sure to rotate the eggs through the warm spot. It'll be interesting when I cram up to a couple dozen eggs in there in a couple of weeks.

 

[mortie]

Trying not to obsess. Sitting on my hands, counting down the hours until Thursday evening if I can wait that long to candle. That will be day 4 and from pictures I have seen day 4 is a great day to see veins. I did peek at one this morning and I don't see anything yet.

 

[mortie]

I knew today would be the first time I could possibly see anything in my eggs if candled so I waited until it got dark and candled a couple and was thrilled to see VEINS!!! I did two brown ones and two blue and one of the brown ones I couldn't see anything but the others definitely had little red spiders inside.

I know we have a long way to go before we have actual chickens on the ground but for this city slicker, veins are a great first step!

 

[lazy gardener]

 

[mortie]

Nothing much going on. I came upon the bator yesterday and found it at 102 and the other thermometer that reads about a degree high said 103 so I made a teensy little adjustment and tried not to worry too much. I candled all the eggs and all but one showed some veins but I am really concerned about the temp spike in there. I was up every couple of hours through the night checking on it and now it's in the ideal range (98-100 depending on which thermometer I believe) but natrually I am worried and trying REALLY hard to keep my hands off them. Messing with them won't help them or change anything so I'll wait for day 7 (sunday) which was my next scheduled candling to see what we have. By then if they died it should be fairly evident I think.

 

[aart]

Don't throw anything out until day 18 unless it stinks...you'll learn a lot as you candle on day 7-10-14-18..and keep yer mitts OFF the thermostat!

The first week seems very long.....then day 10 is here...then it goes by fast,(except watching for them to hatch on day 21-22-23---24) especially if your brooders not built yet...lol