Chickens = Eggs = Chicks??

So we have snuggled into our respective nests – lovely wood fires keeping us warm – and no big projects on the go right now.  So you might be wondering what you do in the winter, in the middle of nowhere, when you have no outside forms of entertainment.   Why you play with your egg incubator don’tcha know!?? Fallon has thrown herself into learning all she can about the art and science of hatching her own chickens!  It is a little heavier on the science side than the art side – but she is up for the task!  Surely if chickens can hatch their own, then Fallon can get the job done too!   Bring on the science.

So first of all you need to purchase an incubator – for those of you who read the first couple posts, you know that we actually brought one with us that Chuck and I found when we were scoping out things we would need, before we left the lower Mainland.  Sad to say – we managed to break it on the way here.  So Fallon settles on one that she sees online and we patiently (hahahaha) wait for it to arrive in the mail…… sigh… yes, in the mail.   While she is waiting for it to arrive, Fallon designs and builds a house for the baby chicks – apparently referred to as a brooder box.  Looks pretty snazzy to me! Next up is looking into ways to keep the little darlings warm, very warm.  They start off needing the temperature to be close to 95 degrees, which you slowly decrease over time.  But you ask a simple question on an online forum and you get a hundred different ideas of what is the right way to to get the job done.   Heat lamps vs no heat lamp, red light vs soft white light, 103 degrees vs 95 degrees, and what about and EcoGlow chick brooder that mimics the heat from a real chicken and doesn’t upset their sleep/wake cycles (seriously??).  Horror stories abounded about burning down coops using heat lamps and how the white light is too glaring for baby chicks.  Who knew what to believe!  At the end of the day, Fallon chose a EcoGlow brooder and… yes…. ordered that up from Amazon…. and waited for it to come in the mail.

All this before we even know if we have a rooster that is doing his business with the ladies, and if any of our eggs are even fertilized!  Well, this is a science experiment after all – so we just forge ahead and get the incubator set up when it arrives.  Fallon then takes a handful of eggs – numbers them – and puts them in the incubator where they will stay for approximately 21 days.  The incubator does it’s thing, but you need to watch the temperature and keep it at a steady 99-103 degrees, and then you need to make sure that you have enough humidity in there – but not too much.  Total balancing act…. better Fallon than me!  So Fallon keeps it all under control and we all start holding our breath!

Next piece of nifty mad scientist procedures that need to happen are – on day 14 – you need to “candle” your eggs.      ?Huh?  So….. candling involves shining a bright light through the egg (and we were worried about glare??) to see if you can see a developing chick.  Fallon gave us all the details at length and talked about stuff like, dark patches, blood vessels, blood rings, air sacs and various other “signs” that we have a chick growing in there.  That’s my medical geek baby! Anyway, once you candle them – you need to remove any eggs that are not showing any signs of being fertilized – so that they don’t blow up in the incubator – that sure sounds like fun times.

So….. round one actually ended in tragedy!   Fallon had candled the eggs and things were looking pretty good for most of them, and then we had a huge storm that knocked out the power at our place for a day and a half.  All the embryo’s died because we couldn’t keep them warm enough without the incubator.  Fallon did a couple “eggtospies” to see what was going on inside and we found out that our rooster was certainly doing well by the ladies because they were all fertilized.

Given that, Fallon starts all over again.  Round 2 also ends without any live chicks….. sadness all round…. but another lesson learned about airflow and humidity.  Clearly we are not nearly as good at this as the hens are!  But round three brings success!!!! The eggs make it to day 20 and we start looking to see a “pip” which is a small break in the outer shell of the egg that indicates that the chick is starting to make his way out! Fallon texts us all to let us know it is happening – we have two eggs that have “pipped”. Once they do that, they start to “unzip” the egg by making small breaks in the shell in a circle around one end of the egg.  Once that is done, they start to punch at the bottom of the egg with their feet to break the end off.  Kinda exciting to watch!   All of us, including the dog, sat on the floor near the incubator and watched the chick fight his way out of the egg.  Fallon played cheeping noises from her cell phone to encourage the little guy to get out!  Soon we have two lovely chicks wobbling around inside the incubator drying off and getting fuzzy and fluffy!  Yay!!!!   They are gorgeous!

Time to fire up the EcoGlow and get the brooder warmed up.  We have baby chicks to raise!  New life has come to Owl’s Hollow Homestead.   Fabulous job Fallon!