It's sad....today would be day 21.

[krv]

The recent ice storm hit us hard here is Kentucky. A whole lot of people lost their electricity, including us. We just got it back last night, but there are still many without it around here. We were without power for about a week and my chicks-to-be passed on. They were in my homemade incubator and I know I had some chicks growing in the eggs. They were on day 14.

But since we have power again, I am going to try again. Oh, this was the first time I used my homemade incubator and also the first time that I tried to hatch eggs in an incubator.

I better stop crying. I really didn't cry that much, but it was very sad for me. I did try to keep them warm at first by putting hot water in baggies on top of them, but the hot water ran out.

Rick (son of krv)

 

[cemcnair]

I'm sorry. We didn't lose any chickens here, but I didn't have any little ones trying to hatch right now. I do feel your pain though. We haven't had electricity since Tuesday 1/27 @ 9:00am and it is still not on (yes, I am taking advantage of the electricity at work,

). Same ice storm that knocked out Kentucky really walloped Arkansas too.....

Good luck on your next batch!!

 

[needmorechickens!]

Oh I'm sorry. Don't let it get you down, there was nothing you could do. Try again and I hope you have a great hatch!
~Rebecca

 

[wegotchickens]

I was thinking of all of you in KY and elsewhere surviving without power.

Mine was out this morning for 2 hours. I have 50 eggs in my incubators in all stages of development. Including some that were to hatch Thursday night/ Friday morning.

I'm very depressed wondering what I will find when I candle again. And wondering if I'll have babies by the weekend.

I know you suffered through much more, but I have had a taste of your sadness and it really hurts!! You have my condolences on your loss.

 

[Jenski]

Has anyone here tried hooking up a battery to a power inverter to keep their bators going? Should work. We have one as a backup at home, and DH suggests a deep-cycle marine battery for this purpose.

Hope that helps!

 

[omelette'smom]

Very sad indeed!! However if you believe in old wives tales than they say if you set on the incline of a full moon you will get mostly roosters. Feb 7 is the full moon so now you can have mostly hens. Also, my son is 13 and much smarter than me (boy I hate that) and he is working on a homemade incubator with battery back-up! If he ever finishes what he starts than I'll post how it came out! Bad part is that my DH is mad at the kids for not "taking care" of the chickens and won't let us have more let alone hatch them!! I'll be sleeping in the coop next to the dropping board if I attempt it!! So that's why he hasn't finished making it-he'll never get to use it!

 

[rizq]

Quote:
That would work, but for how long? The inverters pull quite a bit from the battery and will run a regular battery dead in a matter of hours. A deep cycle batt should last longer, but unless you had a few batteries in reserve I cannot imagine that it would keep a bator going for days

 

[wegotchickens]

Quote:
I'll mention this to DH.
I thought about a generator or battery back-up this morning... We have neither but our power rarely goes out for longer than 10 minutes. Until today, when I really needed it to be normal!!

And I'm not sure this would work for the OP, who's power was out much longer!! If my power was out that long, hatching eggs would not have top priority at my house.

 

[Jenski]

Quote:
That would work, but for how long? The inverters pull quite a bit from the battery and will run a regular battery dead in a matter of hours. A deep cycle batt should last longer, but unless you had a few batteries in reserve I cannot imagine that it would keep a bator going for days

A battery would at least serve until you could gather resources in the event of long-term outage. You could also recharge from a car. Anything over 24 hours would require the use of a generator or good supply of fuel. Unfortunately, Kentucky's situation has been more extreme than this!

Ham radio sites are great places to search for emergency backup power/communication. . . if anyone finds more long-term power outage solutions (besides going off-grid, which is one of my goals), please share. Thanks!

 

[rizq]

For sure! I always worry about power outages when my bators are running. So sad that your hatch krv

Need generators, I guess. We need to get one anyone because my dad has sleep apnea and needs his c-pap to sleep. If the power was out for days, I do not know what we would do.