Hooked on chicks

Before we moved to Oakhurst, CA 26 yrs ago, we had a chicken coop with a dozen Rhode Island Reds. I sold my surplus eggs at work. We didn't bring the chickens with us because our new property wasn't set up for chickens and I was afraid the chickens would draw coyotes which might eat my dogs.

Here we are years later. I was feeding my neighbors critters while they were away for the weekend and a broody hen in a rabbit hutch hatched out the cutest little chick. We named her God Chick, GC for short. She was so cute, I had to have chickens again.

The neighbor had an incubator and some fertile eggs and I also bought some Barred Rocks off eBay, as well as an egg turner. At the same time, the local feed store was selling Blue Lace Red Wyandotte chicks. So the neighbor & I each bought 2 (because that was the limit per family). I raised these 4 chicks plus GC in a large dog crate in my home while we spent 3 weekends building a chicken coop. They are 7 weeks at the time of this writing and doing fine.

My first experience with the Little Giant 10200 incubator didn't go so well. I guess I spent too much time playing with the temperature knob. Only 2 hatched out of 20. So we tried it again. So far 16 have hatched with 2 latecomers piping out of 23 viable eggs. Not bad, but I'm sure getting a lot of contradictory information on the internet. That's when I found this Forum and I am looking forward to all the great information and people I will meet here.

We live on 6 acres at the 2900' elevation. I'm a Home Health nurse working part time, almost 65. Hubby works out of town a couple days each week.

 

In my first hatch, 12 eggs were collected from the neighbor over 6 day period and stored on a shelf @ around 70 degrees. They had to wait for the 8 eggs from eBay to arrive. One of the eBay eggs hatched and one of the very first neighbor eggs hatched. Candling showed a poor fertility rate for the neighbor's eggs. A couple of the eBay eggs were infertile, but a couple had shipping problems (scrambled?), but 2 might have been killed by temperature spikes during the last couple of days.

 

What nails, I bit them all off!