How Farmers Hatched Eggs Back in the Old Country

[MuranoFarms]

Quote:
Compost heaps can get up to 160 degrees. Manure is pretty much half baked compost

I can see how that might work.

 

[brendapa]

I might have one even better!
A friend in my garden club stopped over Saturday AM to bring me some plants. Of course, she wanted to see the chicks in the incubator.
She is retired from DuPont Pharmaceuticals but before that, while raising her kids she worked for Sunbeam as a product demonstrator.
She is 87.
She went to the big department stores to show customers the latest & greatest in electric coffee pots & frying pans.
In the weeks before Easter , Sunbeam started to incubate chicks in thier elecric fryng pans! She would take the eggs & the frying pans (with lids)to store's and they would be timed to hatch the day of her demo.

The point of the demo was even heat distribution using stainless steel and perfect temperature control, 100 degrees.
I couldn't beleive it! They must have used an incubator but she said no, they really did do it in the frying pans.

Hmmm, I have to believe her but Sunbeam doing the whole incubation in a frying pan is bizzare.

Brenda

 

[One Acre Wonder Farm]

Quote:
I remember in third grade our teacher set a clutch of duck eggs in an electric frying pan! We had a power outage so we didn't get any ducklings. I'll bet my teacher is probably around the same age as your friend. Pretty cool!

 

[MagsC]

Manure pile? Wow, I learn something new every day, interesting piece of info from the past.

As far as frying pans, I think someone did or was going to do an experiment with that sometime back on the BYC....

 

[jeaucamom]

Lots of folks on here have used the electric frying pan... with good success too.

 

[dutchhollow]

about 10 years ago, my mother was visiting, and commented on my obsession with the incubator. I told her about the temp and humidity and I was checking to make sure they were right (ok checking like 5 times a day!). She told me when she was little my grandmother would just collect the early spring eggs from the hens (I think they always had rir) and put them in a box under the wood stove, she remembers always a box full of chicks, then when they were at pol my grandmother would off her older hens for the pot and replace them each year except for a few favorites.

 

[Daidohead]

I had wormed my ladies and was putting the eggs in my compost pile for about 10 days, I had been breaking them as they were put in. My grandaughter was helping me one day and she took the days eggs out and dumped them without breaking them. I hadn't given it another thought until I was turning the pile a few weeks later and found 6 pipped and zipped eggs, I was shocked. 3 of the chicks had died just out of their shells, It was really sad, I was maybe a day or two late.

Those eggs had been rained on, seen temps in the 20's, and had more debris piled on top of them. And to think, I was worried about a 2 degree temp change in my incubator.

 

[brendapa]

Go figure

Poop piles & frying pans. There is something wrong with this picture.
I don't even want to say what I've spent on "chicken paraphernalia" in the last month but the end sentence would say " holding that little chick in your hand, priceless"

Brenda