I can't believe it is chick season already! Crazy!
I have been working on building my first incubator and even built my own egg turner!!!! I "finished" yesterday and am now testing and making modifications. Everything was working beautifully all day yesterday, but I woke up to a temp of 103. I'm not sure what would cause a temperature spike? I am using a stc-1000 electronic temperature controller if anyone has any ideas, the controller was properly reading the temp at 103 (and my backup thermometer also read 103), I'm just not sure why it allowed it to get that high. I am using 2 60-watt bulbs to heat the joint, have 2 large fans, one blowing over the bulbs and the other pointed down to blow the hot air down. I have plenty of ventilation holes. Anyway, I am gathering eggs this week and will be setting this weekend. Hopefully that gives me enough time to get this figured out! I think I'm going to try 40 watt bulbs and see if that makes a difference unless anyone has any other ideas!
So far total cost for incubator and turner is around $175.
Here she is. It is an 140 quart cooler and will hold and turn around 70 eggs when full!
Auto egg turner. Ignore all the extra holes, there was some trial and error on getting the dowels in the right spots lol.
There I was, bragging on my pellet stove! Auger stopped working in the middle of the night, now I have to hand feed pellets into the fire AND my kitchen pipes froze for the first time since living here! Lawrence County is under travel advisory and Husband still went to work in the little Mazda truck..he left and hour early for the 20 minute drive though!
Good News- Husband decided we MUST have more chickens..has anyone order the meat n eggs special through Murray McMurray or the Hungrey Man Special through Cackle? I am going to wait a while to see how everything goes with a new batch of chickens in the neighborhood before getting my dream flick set up.
I have not ordered from either place, I have had very good success with everything from Meyer. 2 sets of geese and 1 large order of BB White turkeys. Will be ordering the BBB turkeys, and cornish cross this year from them.
Quote: So true, I got 4. Have 2 left I think, and unless I look at the feet, they look like a BA. Not impressed. You saw one of mine when you were here.
Just sharing the breed info for anyone looking for a general laying flock, my personal feeling is breeder stock only (unless they are meant for meat birds.)
I would love to add JGs, the real deal, but have to stop adding breeds til I have more coops built!
wanting to buy a new incubator....was thinking of a gqf incubator but heard bad things about the motor ...needing to be replaced..one guy said he replaced it once a year for five years straight...any thoughts on which cabinet incubator i should get...i love the coolerbators but they only fit so many eggs....and im not sure how well the fridgebator is going to work after alll the work is going to be done
I am very highly pleased with my sportsman 1502. Flawless. No issues even with muscovy eggs, and they can be harder to hatch. I do not use the hatching tray unless I have to. Our house is old and very dry, humidity is an issue in the winter.
I was reading a gardening blog and she keeps ducks and when explaining what her drake has turned into she linked this YouTube video on them FYI i'm giving parents a head ups it explains duck biology and mating so watch ahead of time or by yourself in case you don't want to explain some things https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k01DIVDJlY omg i have never kept ducks and i've never done any research on them so i was quiet surprised by the information on them. all i can say is male ducks seem like jerks during mating season(barbs) lol
This is pretty explicit so parents and younger folks, please be aware! And unfortunately the truth. Drakes will also mate and kill chickens. If the chicken was raised with ducks, it will not realize its a threat to them. Ducks are rarely human aggressive but drakes will fight, like a rooster will during breeding season also.
Update on my first hatch. So far, I have four lavender Orp chicks and one black/lav split Orp chick. Another black/lav split didn't quite make it. It pipped, then died. When I removed it to check, it had an open yolk sac. Bummer, but it happens. There was nothing I could have done. I still have I think another 6 or so eggs to go that haven't even pipped, but I can hear most of them cheeping or hammering away inside. I don't think any more will hatch tomorrow. Photos when all are out and dry!
I can already tell one of the lavs is a cockerel. The little guy was very vigorous, sneaked out while I was napping, and has a comb already!
So I had Cuckoo Silkies due to hatch today. Woke up with 5 chicks out. The last 2 eggs had externally pipped. Left for work at 8am and came back home at 6pm. Found the incubator up to 120F and all the chicks dead! Just when I thought Id have a 100% hatch rate with shipped eggs! This was with the new Little Giant model 7300 I believe with the forced air fan (digital controls and thermostat). That thing will be going in the trash! I had been planning all winter to buy a sportsman, but decided last minute to hold off and just use the little giants as I didnt want to go crazy on hatching as Im not home as much as I was last year due to new job. After this, I think I will be changing my mind and getting the Sportsman on order!
Ahhh thats awful! I agree, had some issues like this with my LGs in the beginning. temp drops was even more an issue with them! I swear by my sportsman and it paid for itself last year.
Had 3-1/2 dozen old eggs. Didn't want to throw away and waste all them so I cracked/crushed all of them into a bowl. My wife was cooking also (yes I was in the way) but her scrape greens I threw into the mix as well. Put about half the mixture into a muffin pan and baked until done. The other half went to the hogs for a snack. The muffins will be chicken snacks tomorrow! I'm sure they will love the bits and pieces in each muffin!!
What diff things have you done with old bad eggs? I think if they did not have the broken shells I would have tried one lol
Great post! My extra eggs go to the hogs here too. They are all frozen the last few days and cracked so I boil em up and toss them in as a treat, shells and all.
And I thought my goat was a bit aggressive in mating. He is quite nice compared to the killer drake in the video above. The video VERY clearly shows the reproductive duck organs, it even has a live drake mating in a lab setting.
wanting to buy a new incubator....was thinking of a gqf incubator but heard bad things about the motor ...needing to be replaced..one guy said he replaced it once a year for five years straight...any thoughts on which cabinet incubator i should get...i love the coolerbators but they only fit so many eggs....and im not sure how well the fridgebator is going to work after alll the work is going to be done
I bought a used Sportsman 1502 incubator and hatcher set four or five years ago. I don't know how long the folks had used them but they had been stored in the barn after the husband's death. Never had any problem with either of them. Maybe the newer ones aren't quite the same quality.
I have heard that Dickey's cabinet incubators are very good.
@bradselig I am SOOOO sorry to hear about your chicks and your incubator fiasco. That's not much better than a predator attack.
As a teen, I once boiled a tank of fish to death when the thermostat on the heater gave out while I was gone for several hours. Not fun to come back to a seafood boil in my living room. They make thermostats for aquariums better now than they did decades ago, but it would be better for a faulty one to get cold than to get hot. You might have a chance to save eggs/chicks if they don't get too cool for too long, but the heat is just killer.
@ChickCrazed I might go in on an order to Sand Hill, but only for 2-3 chicks. I want some Dorkings just for fun. Let me know if you get close enough to place an order! You know where I am! Maybe @Zionsville will already be affected by chicken math and want some more.
I usually have to think about scraps every day and what to feed to who! I try to offer my goats fresh fruit and veggie scraps, and the chickens. Citrus and onion are not a popular item whit any of my critters. I always refer to each species and make sure the scraps are safe for them too. My goats adore fresh peach, pear, apple, corn, even the cobs! Same with the pigs. Unusual foods like kiwi or avacado i don't risk. After losing a cow last year from a poisonous shrub I am very careful what these guys eat. When I kept alpaca they adored the mini carrots.
I cook the potato skins for the hogs too. Cornstalks are a favorite treat in the fall for nearly all of my critters.
My hogs eat cooked bones from chicken, stale bread soaked with leftover drippings from the bbq. They get a real variety aside from the normal hog feed. Any left over "offals" from processing are cooked and fed to the hogs also, including feathers. My belief is, If we take an animals life to feed our family, we need to appreciate that, and not waste anything its given us.
@bradselig I am SOOOO sorry to hear about your chicks and your incubator fiasco. That's not much better than a predator attack.
As a teen, I once boiled a tank of fish to death when the thermostat on the heater gave out while I was gone for several hours. Not fun to come back to a seafood boil in my living room. They make thermostats for aquariums better now than they did decades ago, but it would be better for a faulty one to get cold than to get hot. You might have a chance to save eggs/chicks if they don't get too cool for too long, but the heat is just killer.
Kittydoc
So excited to hear about your current hatch! Did you get any Jubilees?
Funny Fish story:
The teacher in the next lab boiled his fish once. The whole science wing was in the upper 90s, reeking of dead fish when we returned after Spring Break. (high room temp + heaters = dead fish. Thankfully, I had brought all my reptiles home over vacation.) We opened all the windows to air out & adjust temps. With students soon to arrive & no time to clean, the teacher next door dumped his aquariums out the window. My part of the story doesn't end there.... In the spring as I was doing a catapult lab outside, some of my boys discovered the fish remains & decided to flick them at the girls. They tried to convince me that it was more historically accurate than the marshmallows I had given them.
To this day, it remains my personal favorite reason for giving a detention. One of the boys framed his "Using a dead fish as a projectile" detention slip & gave it to me at his graduation.
Yes, I am expecting Jubilee chicks, one today and others over the next few weeks. I am NOT going to store them and save them to put in at the same time. That did not work very well for me. Yes, it is crazy, but I'll figure it out. Every egg has the date I set it marked on it. Thank goodness I have two incubators even though one is small, or I would never get away with it. Right now my 7 egg incubator has 6 Jubilee eggs and 1 that I think is from my black English Orpington Cleo and a lavender rooster, but I can't swear to it and will be keeping it myself. Cleo is such a sweet bird. I'm just hoping it's a pullet.
Up to 5 lavs and 3 splits, with a few more eggs left. Gotta try to catch a little more sleep!
