Incubators - are they like instruments?

[cricket-cricket]

Wow! Thanks. Great information, particularly for a beginner, and I appreciate some of your tips and explanations - such as thermal buffering and the 3 phases of development.

We'll let you know about our results in a few. We're at day 12 or 13 and haven't candled in a few days - though we WILL have to candle again at day 15.

This is really all about my Mom coming to visit (Lord knows we dont need another chicken). She's never candled before (in all her years of raising chickens on the farm in the 40's, imagine that!). Mom is 86 and is very excited to visit our "farm". Of course, my parents had 140 acres, we have 4.5. Not sure if our micro-operation will quite compare, but she's very excited!

I will be re-reading these guidelines though for future use. Thanks again, everyone, for the time you took to submit your thoughtful advice!

 

[Davaroo]

That is really cool about your mom. The fact that she has never candled dovetails with what Ive said about the need to do it. If it was a true need, it can be made to happen with ony a very few basic bits of hardware... a darkened room and a window shade with a hole in it will suffice. Or a shoebox and lightbulb. Pretty basic stuff. But, a fertile egg will hatch or it wont - no amount of "looking" can change that.

So candling is about inspection, not "looking." This is a distinction that has gotten lost on todays hobbyist. To the hobby rearer, this is all neat and even new, as in your case.
And if we're honest, much of what we think we know comes from the science surrounding commercial poultry practice.

Your mom, on the other hand, was undoubtedly a "need farmer." She raised animals as part of an overall scheme to meet the needs of survival, or at least subsistence. She knew what worked and so did everyone else. There was no need to deviate from that. We "moderns," for all our achievements, have wandered from that and simply forgotten stuff.

I have en extensive library of poultry books from the early 20th century. Some are considered classics and I have collected with one purpose: to know what people have forgotten in "non-technical" poultry care.

Your mom is probably much like those books. She is a living repository, a wealth of information if you can get her talking. I'd obtain a little voice recorder and get that information safe and secure.

 

[Absinthe]

Can you recommend some titles?

Barring that, it would be very cool if, copyright respected, you could post some tidbits from these honorable tomes?
Or have you?

(noob to the forums, but not to chickie-babies)

 

[Davaroo]

Titles? Sure, that's easy.

- "The Dollar Hen," Milo M. Hastings. 1909
Reprinted, Norton Creek Press. Find it on www.plamondon.com or ebay.

- "Profitable Poultry Production," MG Kains. 1916. OOP, but available free, here:

http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/ppp/pppToC.html#toc

- "Practical Poultry Management," 6th Edition, 1956. James Rice, Harold Botsford.
OOP. Look on alibris.com

- "Principles and Practice of Poultry Culture," John H. Robinson. 1912
OOP, look on alibris.com

- "Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil," Straw Bale Edition. 2005
Pat Foreman and Andy Lee, Good Earth Publications.
In print. Look on alibris.com

These are only a few in my collection, but some of the best. I tossed in the last one as it should be on everyone's shelf. There are more, of course, and many good ones. But these will get you started.

I could "tidbit" myself into death from these books and do little else. I have done it in past postings.
But, for fun, tell me what you are most curious about. I'll tell you what they say about it.
Then we can cuss and discuss it.