Might want to change to crayons or grease pencils. The chemicals in a sharpie are toxic.
March Hatch-Along Thread- Come Hatch With Us!!!!!
- Thread starter inthesticks
- Start date
Woo! The first eggs are always best.Look what else I got today!!!!! My first egg!!!!!
p
We'll I feel really, really bad right now... While I was candling, I accidentally dropped an egg... It was developing too... I feel really, really bad.
Aww, that's too bad.
I just realized....This is SO facebook for chicken people.
Hi All! I posted in the Feb hatch thread then forgot to keep updated.
We have a split hatch going here, not my first choice, but we built our incubator and our redundancy method seems to be so stable I think we will get through it okay.
I had ordered the first lot of eggs and most came smushed.. only got 3 intact eggs of the breed I ordered out of it, so the seller was nice enough to send me some more. She packed the second set really awesome so they ALL arrived just fine
They are set a week apart.
Due for March 11th : 3 Silkied Splash Ameraucana eggs... One has a detached yolk and another has a hairline crack, the remaining one is in good shape.. when I candle I cant see any faint glow inside any more so I am hoping they all hatch!
Due for March 18th: 6 Silkied Splash Ameraucana eggs ... all in good shape with signs of movement .. these are more saturated with pigment than the early ones... its getting hard to see.
Also 4 Serama eggs... one seems to have pooped, but the other 3 are well and when I candle I go for those first... Last candle they waved their little ... somethings.. wings/feet/?? at me.. I could tell they were saying "Yuck! Its cold out here, stop shining that at me! Go away!" LOL So I wont bother them for a while
)
I havent hatched eggs in two years and that was my single chicken experience... so we are looking forward to these chickies!
We have a split hatch going here, not my first choice, but we built our incubator and our redundancy method seems to be so stable I think we will get through it okay.
I had ordered the first lot of eggs and most came smushed.. only got 3 intact eggs of the breed I ordered out of it, so the seller was nice enough to send me some more. She packed the second set really awesome so they ALL arrived just fine
They are set a week apart.Due for March 11th : 3 Silkied Splash Ameraucana eggs... One has a detached yolk and another has a hairline crack, the remaining one is in good shape.. when I candle I cant see any faint glow inside any more so I am hoping they all hatch!
Due for March 18th: 6 Silkied Splash Ameraucana eggs ... all in good shape with signs of movement .. these are more saturated with pigment than the early ones... its getting hard to see.
Also 4 Serama eggs... one seems to have pooped, but the other 3 are well and when I candle I go for those first... Last candle they waved their little ... somethings.. wings/feet/?? at me.. I could tell they were saying "Yuck! Its cold out here, stop shining that at me! Go away!" LOL So I wont bother them for a while
)I havent hatched eggs in two years and that was my single chicken experience... so we are looking forward to these chickies!
Good Morning,
I need to check the thread more often.......goes so fast I cannot keep up with all I would like to respond to.
First............Banty chickenluv : I am sorry about the egg...I have done this and once it was 1 of two eggs I paid
$10.00 a piece for.GRRRRRRRRRR then, the second one did not hatch either.........
to the person who just joined.sorry, forgot your name............
I just keep learning new things ( thanks Brooke and others ) and that s a large part of what keeps me coming back.
and the laughter..........
I have three LF and two Seramas going into lockdaown today. The LF are a mix from my BLRW Roo and laying flock.
Going to seperate him and his ladies today for purebreds..........
I do not think the Serams made it. Going to candle
I am using nontoxic felt pens.will that hurt the eggs????? I like the different color chioce to help me know which goes into lock down when.
Then use that color on my calender so I won't mess up.
Hope to get pics up today.............
Have a great day all and do not get discouraged........sometimes it takes a few hatches to get it right.
Later.......................
I need to check the thread more often.......goes so fast I cannot keep up with all I would like to respond to.
First............Banty chickenluv : I am sorry about the egg...I have done this and once it was 1 of two eggs I paid
$10.00 a piece for.GRRRRRRRRRR then, the second one did not hatch either.........
I just keep learning new things ( thanks Brooke and others ) and that s a large part of what keeps me coming back.
and the laughter..........
I have three LF and two Seramas going into lockdaown today. The LF are a mix from my BLRW Roo and laying flock.
Going to seperate him and his ladies today for purebreds..........
I do not think the Serams made it. Going to candle
I am using nontoxic felt pens.will that hurt the eggs????? I like the different color chioce to help me know which goes into lock down when.
Then use that color on my calender so I won't mess up.
Hope to get pics up today.............
Have a great day all and do not get discouraged........sometimes it takes a few hatches to get it right.
Later.......................
Last edited:
Oh I forgot to tell you about our home-made bator..
It's a 20 gallon long fish tank... with a small 2 gallon fish tank inside it at one end. The whole thing is insulated with lots of styrofoam. the top is all styrofoam, with a section cut that pops out easily for sticking a hand in. The small fish tank inside has an acrylic lid on it with a long wire attached that goes up and sticks out of the styrofoam... so by pulling or pushing on the wire we can changethe humidity, even close it off all together, without opening the bator. There are also two plastic funnels, one set into the styrofoam on top poking its end down into the bator, and one set in the acrylic top of the small tank inside, positioned under the upper funnel... so we can add water to top up the tank without opening the bator.
The small tank has a good Jaeger aquarium heater in it to keep the water at 95 (its highest temp).
On the opposite end from the small tank is our "heat chamber" lined with aluminum foil with a one inch gap along the bottom of the 'wall' between the heat chamber and the rest of the bator, for the heat to come through. There are two light bulbs inside, a 25 watt and a 40 watt, both of which we can turn off or on from the outside by simply un-plugging or plugging in. It's been swinging temps here in Florida so its helpful to be able to customize the heat source.
Usually we only run the 40 watt, but on hot afternoons we switch to just the 20, on the freezing nights we had we put them both on for short periods.
Hanging from the 'roof' of the heat chamber is a fan... it's actually a car fan meant to plug into the cigarette lighter.. it was the only fan wecould find, but it works nice! Good thing we had an adapter on hand so that simplified things.
So the fan, hopefully!, circulates the air inside the heat chamber and blows it out the bottom gap, so in the middle of the incubator the heat comes out and goes up.
The middle of the incubator is the egg area. It starts out on the bottom floor, with a kitchen scale.. which would have been a great idea but I was not so good with reading the weights as I set eggs :/ LOL
then we have a nice open-squares X-large silverware basket lined with that basket liner. The basket can sit down on the scale. On two ends of the basket there is the same wire as I mentioned before, and those long wires stick up out of the styrofoam top with alligator clips that keep the wire where its set. We use these wires to tilt the whole basket, from the outside, for our turning method.
The eggs are in egg cartons that are cut down with the bottom of the egg cells cut off.
I hope this has been helpful for our eggie with the detached air cell!
We are going to add a smaller silverware basket today with the liner and a small cut egg carton, to set our three lockdown eggs in. well suspend it from the top with wire, hanging over the other egg basket enough so the lower one can keep being tilted form the outside, without the smaller one being tilted.
I hope this works! I also hope the temp is not higher in the upper basket, we will have to see!
We might make some slight changes to the bator before we run it again, just some tweaks to make things more convenient (and especially remember to take the egg weights!) but nothing big... we have really liked the way its working so far!
Oh.. and one addition we made to it was an outside ..... thing. Okay, we cut up a large box that was the same length and breadth of the tank, then taped it to sit on top of the bator like an extra lid, or a dome or a hat.. LOL ... this is because our room temps have been fluctuating so much in this weird Florida weather (So day before yesterday it was 80 degrees, and then last night it got down to 32) so this 'top' has helped a LOT with keeping it stable! I was surprised! My mom covered it with light colored contact paper (sticky paper) and then drew some designs on it... and titled it "Tropical See-Chicks Bator"... so now it looks prettier than a carboard box!
The top had an unexpected effect that was VERY GOOD... the front of the top lifts up like a lid, she just slit the cardboard so it could be opened... so if you lift that top, and then open the bator top and poke around in the bator, the hot air escaping from the bator ends up hanging around in the cardboard top.. it makes a warm protective air pocket.. so I can have the bator open for two full minutes without any change in the incubator temperature. Of course I hardly ever open it, but still it's nice!
It's a 20 gallon long fish tank... with a small 2 gallon fish tank inside it at one end. The whole thing is insulated with lots of styrofoam. the top is all styrofoam, with a section cut that pops out easily for sticking a hand in. The small fish tank inside has an acrylic lid on it with a long wire attached that goes up and sticks out of the styrofoam... so by pulling or pushing on the wire we can changethe humidity, even close it off all together, without opening the bator. There are also two plastic funnels, one set into the styrofoam on top poking its end down into the bator, and one set in the acrylic top of the small tank inside, positioned under the upper funnel... so we can add water to top up the tank without opening the bator.
The small tank has a good Jaeger aquarium heater in it to keep the water at 95 (its highest temp).
On the opposite end from the small tank is our "heat chamber" lined with aluminum foil with a one inch gap along the bottom of the 'wall' between the heat chamber and the rest of the bator, for the heat to come through. There are two light bulbs inside, a 25 watt and a 40 watt, both of which we can turn off or on from the outside by simply un-plugging or plugging in. It's been swinging temps here in Florida so its helpful to be able to customize the heat source.
Usually we only run the 40 watt, but on hot afternoons we switch to just the 20, on the freezing nights we had we put them both on for short periods.
Hanging from the 'roof' of the heat chamber is a fan... it's actually a car fan meant to plug into the cigarette lighter.. it was the only fan wecould find, but it works nice! Good thing we had an adapter on hand so that simplified things.
So the fan, hopefully!, circulates the air inside the heat chamber and blows it out the bottom gap, so in the middle of the incubator the heat comes out and goes up.
The middle of the incubator is the egg area. It starts out on the bottom floor, with a kitchen scale.. which would have been a great idea but I was not so good with reading the weights as I set eggs :/ LOL
then we have a nice open-squares X-large silverware basket lined with that basket liner. The basket can sit down on the scale. On two ends of the basket there is the same wire as I mentioned before, and those long wires stick up out of the styrofoam top with alligator clips that keep the wire where its set. We use these wires to tilt the whole basket, from the outside, for our turning method.
The eggs are in egg cartons that are cut down with the bottom of the egg cells cut off.
I hope this has been helpful for our eggie with the detached air cell!
We are going to add a smaller silverware basket today with the liner and a small cut egg carton, to set our three lockdown eggs in. well suspend it from the top with wire, hanging over the other egg basket enough so the lower one can keep being tilted form the outside, without the smaller one being tilted.
I hope this works! I also hope the temp is not higher in the upper basket, we will have to see!
We might make some slight changes to the bator before we run it again, just some tweaks to make things more convenient (and especially remember to take the egg weights!) but nothing big... we have really liked the way its working so far!
Oh.. and one addition we made to it was an outside ..... thing. Okay, we cut up a large box that was the same length and breadth of the tank, then taped it to sit on top of the bator like an extra lid, or a dome or a hat.. LOL ... this is because our room temps have been fluctuating so much in this weird Florida weather (So day before yesterday it was 80 degrees, and then last night it got down to 32) so this 'top' has helped a LOT with keeping it stable! I was surprised! My mom covered it with light colored contact paper (sticky paper) and then drew some designs on it... and titled it "Tropical See-Chicks Bator"... so now it looks prettier than a carboard box!
The top had an unexpected effect that was VERY GOOD... the front of the top lifts up like a lid, she just slit the cardboard so it could be opened... so if you lift that top, and then open the bator top and poke around in the bator, the hot air escaping from the bator ends up hanging around in the cardboard top.. it makes a warm protective air pocket.. so I can have the bator open for two full minutes without any change in the incubator temperature. Of course I hardly ever open it, but still it's nice!
YAY!!!! happy happy happy!!
I just realized....This is SO facebook for chicken people.
I changed my thinking on the sharpies when I thought about all the "tattoos" my kids drew on their arms with sharpies as youngsters.
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