Last year I bought a couple of the little cheesy incubators online thinking it might be fun to let my daughter or just her class or someone do a little hatch of 3 eggs or so in it. I never did, they sat in the box for a year. So, I decided last month (3-weeks ago to be precise), that I would try 3 eggs from my own flock that are not split up in breeding pens. I took one Ameraucana (most likely crossed with one of the other roos with my luck
), a Welsummer (also likely a cross) and a white egg from who knows which of several hens that may have laid it. Well, go figure, the chicks started to pip yesterday afternoon and I had to leave late afternoon/early evening to drive up 3 1/2 hours to where I was going to take my NPIP Blood Tester Certification Class today. I get on the road to head home and sure enough 2 chicks had hatched. Well, the lid on the those little dome bators doesn't weigh but a feather, the chicks were a little cramped and knocked the cover off and my daughter was all in a tizzy about it. I don't think that last chick (the blue Ameraucana egg) is going to hatch, BUT stranger things have happened. So, she put them in a shoe box with feed and water (mind you, she is just 9-years old) and places it on top of the wire covering a brooder tub in the garage so it got heat from the lamp on there. Well, one died, maybe from having fallen on the floor in the house after busting out of the bator, and when I got home tonight, the other one jumped out and cannot be found (I would like to say we have an orderly, spotless garage, but it would be a fatal lie - it needs a good spring cleaning just like the house). So, of the 3 eggs set, 2 hatched but one is definitely dead and the other is missing likely dead. I did find out that the little cheesy, cheapo bator does the job. Unfortunately, left in the hands of the inexperienced and youthful attendees in my absence, it didn't matter. I feel badly for the little chickies. I think I will stick with the big bators and make a nice hatcher to put them in for lockdown. There are lots more to hatch in the big ones already. Let's hope they all turn out much better.
