Y'all are making me nuts - I keep wondering how folks can have anything hatching when we only set eggs on Saturday. I know, I know, but I'm old and easily confused. :/
Normally, my Brinsea Octagon Advance EX incubator is stupid proof enough for me to forget until lockdown, but Twice now, I've heard the humidity pump just going, and going... When I checked it, the tubing from the pump has been pulled off the more rigid tube to the incubator. The first time, I moved the pump to a better, closer location RIGHT next to the 'bator, thinking it was pulling off the flexible tubing at the far ends of the turning cycle.
The second time, it made NO sense at all to have been disconnected like that.
Then I noticed two eggs immediately behind and almost under the turner cradle. Fresh eggs. And a single, barred rock feather....
Belinda BR has been sneaking into the house to lay her egg! She comes through the door to the deck, which is left open during the day for house silkie Sparkle to go outside into the FENCED garden for her constitutional. (Sparkle hatched four chicks over the weekend, and is raising them in the brooder bin in the office, under the incubator table.)
So sneaky Belinda "must have heard" Beth and Punkin lay thir eggs in the house - the clean linen bin and the dogs' bed, respectively - before I put them outside all day. She was one of the chicks hatched in last year's Easter Hatch-a-long, and like regular chickens, has been outside ever since she was eight weeks old or so. Beth BR and Punkin BO are starting to check out the main coop during the day - they recently discovered there's feed out there, and more than just what has been served in a small feeder for them and Sparkle. They stay out later and later every day before they tap at the French door windows. Eventually, I won't let them back into the house at night.
But at least I have solved the mystery of the disconnected humidity pump.
Normally, my Brinsea Octagon Advance EX incubator is stupid proof enough for me to forget until lockdown, but Twice now, I've heard the humidity pump just going, and going... When I checked it, the tubing from the pump has been pulled off the more rigid tube to the incubator. The first time, I moved the pump to a better, closer location RIGHT next to the 'bator, thinking it was pulling off the flexible tubing at the far ends of the turning cycle.
The second time, it made NO sense at all to have been disconnected like that.
Then I noticed two eggs immediately behind and almost under the turner cradle. Fresh eggs. And a single, barred rock feather....
Belinda BR has been sneaking into the house to lay her egg! She comes through the door to the deck, which is left open during the day for house silkie Sparkle to go outside into the FENCED garden for her constitutional. (Sparkle hatched four chicks over the weekend, and is raising them in the brooder bin in the office, under the incubator table.)
So sneaky Belinda "must have heard" Beth and Punkin lay thir eggs in the house - the clean linen bin and the dogs' bed, respectively - before I put them outside all day. She was one of the chicks hatched in last year's Easter Hatch-a-long, and like regular chickens, has been outside ever since she was eight weeks old or so. Beth BR and Punkin BO are starting to check out the main coop during the day - they recently discovered there's feed out there, and more than just what has been served in a small feeder for them and Sparkle. They stay out later and later every day before they tap at the French door windows. Eventually, I won't let them back into the house at night.
But at least I have solved the mystery of the disconnected humidity pump.
