Day 20 - 4 new chickies hatched!

How did I fall behind in writing about our not so newly hatched chickens?  Well, time has a way of getting away from me.  I did write a great post the other night a moments before I was ready to publish it my UPS died.  What a bummer!


Right before I went to sleep Tuesday night I noticed one of the chicks had started to pip through the egg.  I was surprised it was early.  Usually my chicks are late....just like me, I'm never on time going anywhere...LOL  That eggs was not the 1st to hatch though.  Here's a picture of that egg.

Anyway, our chicks actually started hatching a day early this time.  That has never happened to me before and it was a nice surprise.  I woke up early on Wednesday 6-8-11 to a newly hatched chick.  It was a cross between a silky and unknown rooster type.  I am waiting on confirmation about that.  Anyway, here is a picture of that little chick.  We started calling it BJ or Bob Jr.  We know the rooster (Dad's) went by the name of Bob.

During the course of the morning 3 more chickens hatched.  It was great to watch them hatch.  I got a lot of it on video also.  Here's a picture of some of those eggs before they hatched.  You can clearly see the chick's are trying to get out.

Here's a picture of them after they hatched.  They are pooped as you can tell.

Here's a very short video (less then 2 minutes) I made of one of the chicks hatching.  I made three of them this time and I am FINALLY going to get them posted on Youtube.

Good start to our chickens this time.  Check the next post, day 21 to see the rest of the chicks when they hatch.

** How I candle eggs and you can too **

So you may be wondering, what is candling an egg and why in the world would you even do that?

Candling is done by holding a bright light near the egg so you can "peek" into the egg.  In this way one should be able to determine if there is a chick growing inside or not.  Candling is done after the eggs have been in the incubator for at least a few days. 

You may be wondering if it is hard.  Don't worry, it's not.  Candling can be done with a LED flashlight or a home made egg candler.  There are many ways to make something home made.  I've done both ways.  

Our eggs have now been in the incubator 14 days, 7 more to go.  Here's a pic of them I took a little while ago.  The incubator is also home made.  I'm sure that's pretty obvious.

 Here's a pic of my home made egg candler.  I only had a small coffee can and it didn't fit properly on top if the lamp//ight bulb so I added a little extra length with a newspaper. I used  some packing tape to secure the paper to the can. I punched a hole in the bottom of the can (now the top for my purposes) and used to white playdough to position the egg properly.  

 I took the picture below in the light.  Doing it in the dark is best.  Here's an egg from my fridge on the egg candler. You can see straight through it.  The orange shadow you see is just that, it's a defect from my camera I guess?  I'm not sure.  There is no chick growing inside of this egg so if it had been in the incubator I would have tossed it.

 Now in the next pictures you can see the veins running through the egg and the chick is much bigger now and is darker.  

 This one below was candled with an LED flashlight.   You can see the air pocket much better in this picturet.  This is the air the chick breathes while developing.

Here's another  picture of an egg I candled with an LED flashlight.  The veins are much more clear and you can see the air pocket.  I candled this one in the total dark.

As the chicks get bigger they will fill up the egg more and more.  I don't candle too much.  It's exciting to see life growing inside an egg.  These methods work great for white and light brown eggs.  They do not wok at all for dark brown eggs and green eggs.  I have 1 dark brown egg (maran) and 1 green egg (aracuana) and I cannot see into them at all.  In the future I am going to try to overcome this obstacle with a different candler design and possibly a super-bright LED light.  

To recap from previous posts:  My incubator temperature is around 99.5 degrees, Humidity is around 25-30%. I turn the eggs 3 times a day.  After 18 days of doing this then I will raise the humidity in the incubator to around 60%.  That is easily achieved by adding a medium jar of water.  Also at that point I will quit turning the eggs.  The eggs should start hatching within 21 days.  I've had eggs hatch after that before but only a couple.  More on hatching in a future post.

I get really excited around hatch time.  I hope you do too.  

If you're interested in our adventures, then follow us. We'd love to have you on board. 

Day 6 Incubation - Candling Eggs and update on the Silkies

Today at 3:34 started Day 6.  I just couldn't stand the suspense anymore so I candled some eggs.

I first candled the eggs from our chickens since I thought they may/may not be fertile.  Much to my surprise four (4) of the  six (6) eggs from our chickens proved to be fertile and I could clearly see the beginnings of a chick growing.  It was hard for me to get these pictured clearly.  I took one picture earlier and a few more when it was completely dark.  Notice how you can see the "chick" and then veins through the shell.  

I tried candling the darker eggs but they were too dark for me too see what was going on inside.  I took out the 2 eggs that I knew were not fertile and thus not developing.

Also took some new pics of the silkies.  The white one appears to be a silkie and some other breed as it is growing feathers.  Here's the new pics. They sure are cute.  A stinkbug got in their "home" tonight and agitated them.  This stinkbug had their entire attention and it was kinda cute to watch them.

About 2 weeks ago, I was at the library and I got about 3 years worth of "Backyard Chicken" magazine for FREE.  Yeah, I was excited.  We've all been reading them and I have been learning a lot more about chickens.

One question I get from a lot of people is about the chicken eggs.   A lot of people seem to think you need a rooster to get eggs from your hens.  This is simply not true.  Hens will lay eggs with or without a rooster.  However, you do need a rooster to get eggs that are fertile and can be incubated and thus reproduced.  It is perfectly fine to eat infertile or fertile eggs.  I hear that fertile eggs may have a bit more of nutrients but that is nominal.  Honestly, I can't vouch for that 100%.

Can't wait for new chicks! 
. 
 

New eggs incubating (Day 4) and New eggs from Feb Chicks

We started a new batch of chicken eggs the other day.  We will soon be ending day 4 and starting on day 5 around 3:30 PM.  There are 19 eggs in this batch.  Six (6) of them are questionable because they are from our current chicks.  Since we know we have (2) roosters perhaps it is possible they are fertilized?  We're not sure.  We'll be able to candle them soon and see if there is anything growing inside of them. Here are the eggs before incubation.  I broke one by accident.

  Here they are in the incubator:

We have kept the temperature around 99.5.  Thus the thermometer fluctuates between 99 and 100 degrees.  The humidity fluctuates between 25-30%.


The chicks we hatched back in February are now around 15 weeks old.  We think we got 2 new eggs from them today.  They didn't look like our other eggs and they even had a somewhat rough shell texture.  They were also smaller then our other eggs.  A hen laying eggs at fifteen (15) weeks is early but not unlikely.  Hens usually lay eggs around 18-20 weeks.  That has been our experience in the past.

Here's a pic of the new eggs:

Here's a pic of one of the 'new' eggs next to one of our regular eggs.

 So what do you think?  Is it an egg from a new laying hen or one that is already established?

Backyard Chickens update + new Silkie Chicks

Our chickens are continuing to grow and thrive.  The ones we hatched last are doing nicely along with the other hens we had.  We now know that two (2) of them are roosters.  Their crows are weak and uneven, it is kinda pathetic but in a cute kind of way to listen to them.  My hubby said that one of them was trying to get it on with one of our older hens.

Hmm?  Wonder if he was successful?  If he was maybe we have fertile eggs again???  I saved 3 of the eggs yesterday to go with the next batch to incubate. More on that later.

We took my stepdaughter to get 2 silkie chicks last Saturday.  The guy we got them from had about 25-30 of them.  He had a nice coop and was very knowledgeable.  She picked out a black chick and a white chick.  The black one is very calm and the white one is hyper.  Here is a picture of her holding them.

My hubby, ever he awesome handyman that he is buit some new boxes for the chickens to lay eggs.  The chickens however are very unappreciative and have yet to use them.  They kicked out all of the straw.  We need to remove the old ones and make some modifications on the new ones.  Here's a couple of pics of the new boxes.

The best part is we can now collect the eggs from the outside....well if we want too....when they start using the boxes.  Tomato (the chicken shown is above) just hates my hubby.  She seems to hate all men actually, I don't know why.  She is also at the top of the pecking order and the is THE BOSS.  She always tries to attack my hubby when he gets eggs, so I usually get them.  She's fine around me. Here's a view out the outside of the boxes.  Just lift up the lid (secured with a lock so chickens can't escape) and collect the eggs.

The chickens have been enjoying the nice weather lately and so are we.  Here they are roaming around in their run. I'll have to get a better picture next time.  It doesn't look like it but there is a lot of room.  We have a big yard for them to roam around in too.  This was taken on one of the many rain days in between the nice weather.

 Check back soon.  We are going to incubate and hopefully hatch a lot of new little chicks.

Passings of Chicken Little & Spartacus

It's been a while since I last wrote.  How much can I write our chickens?  Not much.  I could write about any chickens or do a while chicken education type thing but that is not likely to happen. 

Have some sad news.  Chicken Little has passed on to that great big chicken coop in the sky.  Blame it on the other chickens, that is all I have to say on the matter. 

We are also down another one, specifically the Rooster, Spartacus.  We had always planned on using him for food.  It was time.  He was crowing all hours of the day and night.  God Bless out neighbors for being so tolerant.  We didn't really hear him crowing until the weather got nice and we were able to keep our windows open for air.  RIP Spartacus.

All of the baby chicks I wrote about previously are integrated out in the coop and doing nicely.  At first the older hens ignored them except for Pilot.  Here's a pic of that, taken at night time.  They were all crowded together. 

Now they all seem to be acclimated to each other. Here's some pics I took a couple of days ago.

They are also enjoying the warmer weather.  We let them roam around freely when we are outside to keep an eye on them.  We spend a lot of time outdoors during the nice weather doing gardening and spending time with the kids.

Check back soon, we are going to incubate some more egss and hopefully get a lot of chicks hatched.

Chick segregation no more - in the new home

The chicks are all growing so fast.  This second batch is not as people-friendly as Chicken Little, our first hatch.  I don't handle them as much since there are so many of them.

They all needed to be in a bigger "home".  They can't be outside yet because it is too cold and the other chickens who are adapted would probably kill them.   Same for Chicken Little.  So we built a big sturdy wooden enclosure for them.  It is in the basement in a small, rarely used workshop room.



Prior to this Chicken Little had been by him/herself in a box and the chicks in another.  We started by introducing CL by just peeking in the box.  CL seemed interested.  We did this for a couple of days.

After that, when the box was ready I actually integrated them all together in the box below.  Yes it was tight but I figured it there were any problems I'd know quite quickly.  I observed no problems and just kept checking on them.  No squawking or any distress noises so it was going well.  They were all getting along fantastic.  I think CL was finally happy to have some company.  The other chicks may not have been as happy but since they are smaller then CL they were forced to accept him.

So they all are doing great being together and in their new home. CL now has to share the mirror and the other chicks seemed kind of fascinated by their reflection.

I can't wait until it gets warm enough for them to go outside and live, eat drink, etc.  That day is coming soon. Till then they are quite content in their new digs.