4 new chicks - 1 day early

Woke up this morning and saw one of the eggs had been pipped.  This wasn't a total surprise as I had seen eggs moving slightly in the bator.  

Was gone all day but came home a somewhat newly hatched chickie.  So cute!

It wasn't too long until Chick# 2 made it's appearance.

Went outside with the kids for a while and came back in to see Chick # 3 hatching and within 15 minutes Chick# 4 was hatching.  I got that one on video and I'll post it later.

Sadly one of the chicks died in it's egg.  It pipped but never made it out.  I don't know what to make of that.

I got another pipped egg and a egg where the chick is having a problem getting out. I know you're not supposed to help them but as usual, I am.  I've had some successes in the past.

Here's how the incubator looks now:

Here's a picture of the 4 chickies in their temporary home.

Three of these chicks hatched from the dark brown maran eggs.  I'm hoping some of the white leghorn eggs hatch tomorrow.  They were candled and all viable.  

Till tomorrow......

Double Yoke Eggs - Twin Chicks??

One of my eggs currently in the incubator is a double yoke egg.  I've only had a couple of them this year.  Funny how last summer I had tons of them.


I did try to hatch a couple of them last summer but after candling them and seeing no signs of life I gave up on them.


I've candled the egg a couple of times and have had an air sac.  However the egg is a brown egg so it is hard for me to see veins like I see in the white eggs.  

The difference between the double yolk egg and regular eggs is huge (no pun intended).  I candled it again tonight and I think whatever started growing has died.  I'll give it a few more days as long as I don't get any funky odors in my incubator.  


So I did some googling and found that it is very rare to even get double yoke eggs.  They usually occur every 1 out of 1000 eggs.  It is even rarer to hatch twin chicks out of a double yoke egg.  I think human intervention was necessary to facilitate a successful hatch of twins.  


Well we'll see what happens but I'm not very optimistic.   Still I'll be thankful to have the other eggs hatch and have healthy chicks.

April-2012 - Candling new chicken eggs. Day 14

It has been a long time since I last blogged.  I just can only write so much about my chickens.  That and I get busy and time just passes quickly. So I've been pulled back into blogging again by two things. 


1.  I've got another set of eggs in the incubator due to hatch April 20-21.
2.  I got a comment on one of my older blog posts.


So I guess some people actually read this blog.  I write this blog mostly for myself, an online journal of sorts. It helps me remember things I forget from my previous incubations like temperature, humidty, etc.  However I "attempt" to blog as though I might get a reader besides someone in my famly or my friends.


Welcome "gshabir15", my newest follower and commenter.  I hope you have had some success in candling your eggs and finding signs of life. Please drop me a line and let me know how it went.



I put over 40 eggs in the incubator on March 30 but had to remove some a couple of days later.  It was just too crowded and the temperature was too inconsistent on the bottom - a full 11 degrees lower.  Definitely can't grow chicks at 88 degrees.


I candled all of the remaining eggs the other night.  It was very difficult to see through the brown eggs.  I figured 18 of the eggs were no good as I saw no air pockets in them so I discarded those eggs.  


I candled some eggs a few minutes ago and here's some pics.  The top pic is a dark egg - you are looking at the air pocket inside.  The middle pic a closeup of the air pocket of a white egg and you can see the blood vessels.  The bottom pic is the air pocket of the white egg.

I also made a quick video on candling eggs.  It's on my youtube which is under the name "kitchenchickens" as my incubator is right on the edge of the open shelf/wall of the kitchen.  Here's the video:

Since there were so many eggs being incubated it seemed logical to use a different method instead of manually turning all of the eggs.  This time I put the eggs into egg cartons and I lean them sideways.  I just change the sideways direction each time I "turn" the eggs.

I've read you're supposed to turn the eggs 3 times a day which I usually do.  If you forget sometimes don't worry.  I forget sometimes and my chicks have been fine.   Here's a shot of my current setup in the incubator.

We are keeping these chicks but we have someone who wants many chicks so we will be doing some more chick egg incubations after these ones hatch.  


I've also met more "chicken lovers" out there with way more chickens then I have so I'll be posting about them too.  After all, I can only blog about my chickens so much.


Stay tuned - I promised it won't be so long....I'll make an honest attempt to blog regularly.

Chick update

It's hard for me to believe these chicks are going to be 2 weeks old this week.  They are getting so big.


One of them is having issues but I'm not sure what is going on.  When I checked on them earlier it was on it's side and seemed to have trouble balancing.  I picked it up and it seemed relieved that I did so.  They don't like to be handled too much.  I held it for a while and gave it extra food and water.  It seemed to perk up.  Here's the little guy:

The chick's legs seemed ok but I will have to keep a close eye on it.  I tried to separate it with a couple of the smaller chicks but that didn't work well.  The other two smaller chicks easily escaped. So they all went back with the other chicks.  So far, so good.


Here's some update pics of the silkie/silkie mix.  They are cute!

I'll post an update on the other's soon.  They'll be outside in just a couple of days as soon as their new area is ready.


Check my post tomorrow on the "Chicks in the hood" Chicken coop tour I went to recently.  It was awesome!

Day 21 - More new chicks, they are so cute!

Day 21 ended up with a lot more new chicks.  I did help one chick hatch and I was unsure of it's fate for a little while.  It looked bad for a while but within a couple of hours was just as active as the other chicks. I've helped some chicks hatch and you do have to be so careful but it can be successful or an epic fail.  I'll write more about both scenarios in the future.


Out of 17 eggs, we had 13 chicks hatch.  Out of the other 4 eggs, I wondered what happened so I slightly tapped them with a pencil until the shells cracked.  I learned that two (2) of the eggs were never fertilized.  The other two (2) eggs had chicks in them but I did not go any further to see what had happened.  I just know they didn't make it.


I decided to put the 2 silkies we got a few weeks ago together with these new baby chicks.  I kept a close eye on them to make sure none of the little chicks got hurt.  Within a day they all were blending together very well.  Here's a pic of them in their temporary holding area.  

I think these are some of the best looking chicks we've hatched thus far.  Look at the pics and let me know what you think.

 Once the weather warms up and they get a bit older they will be outside in a their own part of the coop.  It won't be long.  Chicks grow so fast.  Check back soon!

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.  

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