Someone on the hatching thread said that if the temp didn't stay up very long it didn't usually destroy the hatch.
Exactly right! Think of it as two temperatures. There is the air temperature in the incubator and the liquid temperature of the eggs themselves. The thermometer is generally measuring the air temperature which responds quickly. So when the lid is lifted off the incubator, the air temperature will quickly cool and the thermometer will register that, but will just as quickly register when it returns to normal after the lid has been put back on.
The internal temperature of the eggs does not respond nearly as fast. So a spike up to 113 for a short time only means the air is that temperature. The eggs take much longer to get up there. As long as it is caught quickly and the temperature lowered before the eggs have a chance to get too warm, the hatch shouldn't be affected.
Venymae, congrats on the chicks so far!
I have one pip this morning for a hatch due late Wednesday. I had to put a cardboard divider in my incubator to keep the chicks separate once they hatch, at least until I know for sure what I have. I sure hope the divider holds up to chicks bouncing off it in their attempts to walk. Its the first time I've tried a divider.
I got my first turkey egg of the year a few days ago. I'm letting the hen collect a clutch and she has added two more to the nest. However they are calling for a low temp of 29 this weekend so I may need to bring them inside after all.
I finally planted my asparagus this weekend. I was a bit overwhelmed by the directions, calling for me to dig a trench 12" deep and 12" wide and then make hills and then put in crowns and then do this and then do that. As I started to dig, my neighbor came out and I told her I didn't know if I'd even be able to get down 12" deep. She laughed and said when she planted hers 20 years ago she didn't follow all the fancy directions - just dug a hole and plopped them in. They came up fine and have done brilliantly ever since. So I felt quite relieved and decided to stop stressing about it. I dug as deep as I could but most crowns did not get a hole anywhere close to 12" deep. I did give each a handful of compost to get them started and then I covered the entire plot with a light layer of mulch when I was done. I had a few crowns left over after filling the space I had. There is sod next to that spot but I may try to dig it out a little today and get those last few crowns planted.
Danz, congrats on the progress with your garden. What we did when we fenced around our garden was to use a livestock panel at each end, attached only to one t-post at each end of the panel by zip-ties. That way we could easily cut the zip-ties and pull the panel out of the way in order to get the tiller in. We did do that the second year and it worked very well - my neighbor's tractor and big tiller had no problem going through the 16' gap to till the garden for us. However we no longer till as since then we've gone with the deep mulch method which works better for us at keeping weeds down.
