Getting the flock out of here - a diary of a crazy chicken man

[piglett]

just as well there's kind hearted gentlemen in this world. those poor lonely chickens.

what great happenstance. May they lay quickly. get the bator going. there is work to be done

lucky bugger

mixing them with my buff orp. hens should give me 50% buff & 50% lemmon Cuckoo chicks
one of them has great barring the other is just ok

my agressive buff roo who loves to attack everyon inclucing MY WIFE
will become the Wed. night meal

too dark for pictures but did i say that i only gave $5.00 for the pair

 

[ozexpat]

the Denver trip is on. The grand poobah at the hospital approved my travel. Mrs Oz is excited. I laid out an itinerary that included a visit to chicken mountain, so it looks good.

 

[piglett]

what day do you need the eggs devivered by to your place in Ca ?

 

[ozexpat]

mixing them with my buff orp. hens should give me 50% buff & 50% lemmon Cuckoo chicks
one of them has great barring the other is just ok

my agressive buff roo who loves to attack everyon inclucing MY WIFE
will become the Wed. night meal

too dark for pictures but did i say that i only gave $5.00 for the pair

I wasnt thinking about the new protein for adobo but you cant have Mrs P being attacked. Crossing with the buffs is along the lines of what I meant. Those lemon bars are spectacular. OGM's roo was awesome till coyotes got it.

 

[piglett]

I wasnt thinking about the new protein for adobo but you cant have Mrs P being attacked. Crossing with the buffs is along the lines of what I meant. Those lemon bars are spectacular. OGM's roo was awesome till coyotes got it.

correct, attacking me is one thing but when you attack my Pinay you just crossed the line son!
will you have room for an extra dozen OZ?
i can add in whatever silkie & britts i can over a 4 day period



piggy

 

[ozexpat]

correct, attacking me is one thing but when you attack my Pinay you just crossed the line son!
will you have room for an extra dozen OZ?
i can add in whatever silkie & britts i can over a 4 day period



piggy

I am sending over a couple of books and some software for Mrs P by the end of the week. I will include a shipping foam. I will take however many you can put in it in 4 days.

Thanks Pig

 

[piglett]

I am sending over a couple of books and some software for Mrs P by the end of the week. I will include a shipping foam. I will take however many you can put in it in 4 days.

Thanks Pig

thanks OZ
i'll load you up with everything i can get my mits on
these Greenfire roos are a little younger than the boy i had in the coop before
one is only 9 months old so they should make nice large babies
also unlike my black english orpingtons these are lite colored
so they might do better in the Philippine sun
but i have never heard that Orpingtons were not good in the heat
i'll send both and you & Bernie will see what works there
if the locals think those other ones were big just wait till they see these monsters

 

[ozexpat]

I have great hatch rates here in the USA but the last trip to the Philippines was a total bust.

My solution is to try and emulate my hatching process here.

The first step is humidity. I could not get the incubators there below 55% this hatch and most of the time they were at 60%

I decided to invest in the following

this little gadget is designed to use with a dehumidifier. Its a hygrostat. You plug a de-humidifier into it and you can control the humidity

normally you would plug a house size de-humidifier into it to control humidity in a basement - but this little gem will fit nicely into my big bator. I have been trialling it in by bedroom and it even pulls water out of the air here with 20% humidity. I will test them together in my bathroom tonight. This should automate the humidity control - Bernie should not have to open the bator ecept to empty the container. If it fills in a day, then I will drill a hole in it and attach a drainage hose - I may do it anyway.

the second thing to do will to be to monitor cell size, or water loss from the eggs. I will provide Bernie with a scale, mark 3 eggs from each breed with a number and have him way them on day 7, 14 and 18. Additionally I will have him draw the air cells and take photos for a log. He can at least toss the clears, and count blood rings and early quitters so we know our viable egg hatch rate.

Next is temperature. I am changing the bator thermostat to a digital. They really are nice. I have them here in the US on all my bators.

The ants will be a non-issue now we have seen the problem, we can fix it.

Finally is the power reliability.

I bought a spent battery-ed 600W rated UPS. The bator uses 150 watts max, Instead of the small battery that is inside (and useless anyway) I will use a deep cycle marine battery. That should give me more than enough hours of dependable power when the electricity company decides to do repairs. If there is a power outage overnight, while Bernie is asleep, it will be seemless.

Strict temperature, humidity and power control, candling, weighing and documenting.

We are going to win this battle.

 

[Ashburnham]

Great work Oz!
Here is my latest solution to the frequent day long power cuts I get here.
A 300 watt 12 volt inverter to run the incubator from.
As the bator only draws 48 watts max, it should last a day.

 

[piglett]

sounds good OZ
i'll look forward to the results

i did something different on my last hatch
i always have a couple eggs that never pip, never hatch
one time i had 28 out of 32 hatch out
when i opened up the 4 remaining eggs
i saw fully formed chicks
so on this last hatch i did something different
i had 4 pips, once they all 4 hatched out i opened that bator
yes yes i know everyone says that is a no no
however i didn't find anymore pips so i cracked each aircell
yes i cracked each shell of the non pippers
guess what they all hatched