North Carolina

[dutchbunny83]

you have bacteria in the incubator..........that will cause
blood rings and/or eggs to quit or get blood rings. Shut
down the bator, clean and disinfect/sanitize it

Okay, thank you!
I'm almost half way through and only lost a couple eggs out of 24 so I'm going to finish the hatch and then do it again.
I bleach it out between each hatch, is there a better way to do it? I also have a hard plastic egg turner and I bleach that between each hatch too.
I'm afraid to scrub too deep since its styrofoam don't want to tear it apart.

Could it be from the eggs? They are from two sellers and one of the sellers sent me some eggs that were pretty dirty. I didn't want to clean them before putting them in, so I put them in as is after resting them.

 

[dutchbunny83]

wild--

 

[Matt A NC]

Dutch,

Put a couple drops of bleach in the incubator water, if you have water in it. If not, then place 1 drop on the bottom of the bator. I do mean DROP(S). As in a single drip. I know it doesn't seem like much, but you would be surprised at how clean smelling a bator can be after a hatch that has had a drop or 2 of bleach in the water.

If you have Oxine that would be better, but bleach works just fine.

Matt

 

[Coop Scoop Boogie]

Good morning folks

so sorry Wild that you had to deal with folks who
aren't very nice at times.

sorry Dutch......that was suppose to read "you MAY
have bacteria".......stupid puter goes bonkers and
drops words letters on me sometimes

hope everyone has a good day

 

[NewHomesteader2010]

Good Morning everyone!!
WILD - I am so sorry you had to deal with that. We get that same treatment, but it's usually from family members who have NO idea what rural life is (you mean you raise your own birds to EAT?) I'd go so far to say that certain family members would say, "Why kill an innocent chicken, just go to the store and buy one that didn't have to be killed" - I am SERIOUS too...sadly. Just know, we know you love your birds and you know you love your birds (and other livestock/pets)...nothing else matters.

Not much to report here. I still have a chicken that refuses to do anything but attempt to sit...even if she's sitting on plastic eggs and golf balls...I don't know what to do with her...we separated her, but she "stole" golf balls to sit on...no joke. We did take them away from her, but I wonder what she will come up with next?!? She is SO underweight that I have been giving her a little extra feed (I've added some broiler feed in with her layer feed hoping to put some weight back on her)...I don't understand how she can manage, but she's a fighter. DH has already said that she's a keeper and she can be our "live in" incubator!! LOL...at this rate, I'm not so sure she'd mind. LOL
Hubby has been SO busy at work - we've had to put our meat pen construction on hold until this weekend. It's mostly built, but we are needing to add HWC to the top and a few other portions as well as bird netting (we want the netting up high with the HWC underneath, in case something breaks through the netting). The HWC has been cut, angled and buried so anything trying to dig will get a paw-full!! Let's hope this will discourage whatever has been attacking ours to reconsider...if not, we'll be setting up traps and possibly shooting whatever it is - within reason (if it's a coyote vs a dog...we'd call animal control on the dog...not sure what we'd do if it was a coyote...is it legal to shoot them? SHOULD we shoot them? I'm going to keep my fingers crossed and pray that it does NOT come to having to find out).
I am amazed at how FAST these little chicks grow. They are only a week old and seem SO much bigger already. I do wish they would NOT run away from us when we go to feed/water them...but I guess that's what you get when you are a big scary monster...especially when this big scary monster brings smaller more terrifying monsters in to gawk!! My 15mo old always signs "please" because she wants to pet the chicks. There is one in particular that I fear she is becoming attached to - good thing it's not a meat bird as it is one of the "rejected" chicks that we got for mama.

Even my 3 yo old - the "I'm afraid of everything" child wants this particular chick. I'm going to have to be VERY diligent in keeping this one safe!!

If anything happens I guess it would be to THAT one!!
Well, not much else is going on here. I am LOVING the sound of a happy rooster crowing again!! The funny part - after getting the roosters, a few days later DH and I heard this WEIRD noise...

turns out our "pullet" who ended up being a rooster and is scheduled to be dinner (the one we thought had something wrong with it because it had never crowed or "done roosterly duties")...starts attempting to crow and it honestly sounded like a bird screaming. LOL. Now...to keep or not to keep?!? He IS a pretty ugly SLW, but could grow into something prettier...LOL.

Have a great day everyone!! The weekend is inching closer and tomorrow marks my little one's 6 week mark...MY how time has flown!!

 

[Fireantz iceman]

Well a different predator returned this morning at 5am. Nit for chickens..HE as in a Thief broke in my nieghbors workshop and was toting of a couple thousand dollars worth of equipment. But another neighbor saw him, several shots later he got away. Been out checking my landscape stuff and trailers plus helping them fix damage and do sheriff's reports

Guess if a guy shows up at the hospital with a couple of slugs in him tjey jist may have their suspect

Back to work for me!

 

[carolbeau]

Question for you all:

For those that light and/or heat your coops in the winter, have you started yet? If not, when do you start? I would like to provide enough light to keep my chickens laying during the winter and some amount of heat. I have a red heat lamp that I used when they were babies that I can put in the coop.

I just checked the sunrise/sunset times and I'm getting 13 hours of light now... (I read somewhere that they need approx. 14 hours of light to lay.) My nighttime low temps are in the low 70's this week, but are forecast to be low 60's next week. Mine are right at the age where I would expect them to start laying soon, so I don't have any already laying to use as a guage.

So.. this may be a 2 part question really (with one part being the light hours and one part being the comfortable temperature)... but ideally the solution would be for me to put the red heat lamp out on a timer so that it comes on at night.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[dutchbunny83]

I have a red brooder heat lamp on in my coop, but it's because some of my chicks are 2 weeks old and it gets cold at night lately.
I just leave it on all the time then they can go under it if they want to.
But it's been so hot during the day they're out in the run with the rest of the chickens.

I didn't use one last winter, but it seems like it would be too early to need it for laying. I would think it would be around day light savings time when it starts getting dark at like 6 that you would need to turn it on.

 

[dutchbunny83]

Dutch,

Put a couple drops of bleach in the incubator water, if you have water in it. If not, then place 1 drop on the bottom of the bator. I do mean DROP(S). As in a single drip. I know it doesn't seem like much, but you would be surprised at how clean smelling a bator can be after a hatch that has had a drop or 2 of bleach in the water.

If you have Oxine that would be better, but bleach works just fine.

Matt

Okay thanks for the tip, I will try it!
I am doing a dry incubation, so not water.
This morning when I looked in the build in humidity reader thing on the top of my incubator said 40%.
I have all the vents open and no water in there. It's also in a room where there isn't sun light shining on it or anything.
I'm guessing because it's so hot and muggy yesterday & today.
Is that too high? I think I'm on day 12.
What could I do to get it to drop?
The temp is steady between 99.5 and 100

 

[Tikkijane]

Question for you all:

For those that light and/or heat your coops in the winter, have you started y If not, when do you start?  I would like to provide enough light to keep my chickens laying during the winter and some amount of heat.  I have a red heat lamp that I used when they were babies that I can put in the coop.  

I just checked the sunrise/sunset times and I'm getting 13 hours of light now... (I read somewhere that they need approx. 14 hours of light to lay.)  My nighttime low temps are in the low 70's this week, but are forecast to be low 60's next week.  Mine are right at the age where I would expect them to start laying soon, so I don't have any already laying to use as a guage.

So.. this may be a 2 part question really (with one part being the light hours and one part being the comfortable temperature)... but ideally the solution would be for me to put the red heat lamp out on a timer so that it comes on at night.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

As long as you have good ventilation, chickens DO NOT need heat! (And really-what would you do if the power goes out?)

Chickens are not warm blooded. They don't need additional heat.

We have never used supplemental heat or lighting. My chickens lay all winter so long as I up their protein.

There are numerous threads here on supplemental heat- one that's particularly good is something like, "Think it's too cold for your chickens? Think again." Or something like that.

Do them the favor and let them build up their natural fat layer. ....just my .02; ymmv.