We tried a new adventure here at Tulip Woods...
Since once of our hens, nicknamed “Broody Mildred”, was unsuccessful at hatching eggs despite how hard she tried, and now that we have the Roo (rooster), we thought we would try hatching some eggs without Mildred’s help. We decided to try 12.
It was anybody's guess as to whether this would be successful ventur, or not, given the following considerations ...
👉we’ve NEVER tried hatching eggs in an incubator before - we had no clue what we were doing!
👉we assumed the incubator we bought online a good one? 🤷♀️ Most reviews said yes, but it’s a roll of the dice
👉we assumed the Roo had been “partying” with all eight hens (for all we kner, he had a favorite or two 😂)
👉we've assumed the Roo is fertile…(we don’t even know how old he is -- we got him at a farm auction)
And it takes 21 days to hatch, alot can go wrong in 21 days!
Candling eggs seemed like it would easy and straightforward --- in theory
In theory, holding incubating eggs up to a bright light (like a flashlight) is suppose to be a very easy way to see if an chick is developing inside the egg.
Three things we discovered along the way
👉 Trying to candle eggs in a dim lighting doesn't work. The whole rrom needs to be dark!
👉 We either had really thick egg shells or maybe it's harder to see through the brown shells -- we had no clue what we were really seeing!
👉 Internet photos that show you what you shoild be seeing at each stage are kind of misleading.
Some websites and posts say you can see the chick's eye early on, others show video of hearbeats, and others suggest you can see blood vessels -- we never saw any of these. That was disheartening and led us to believe we were probably failing at this...but we kept on incubating just in case.
It wasn't untill about Day 16 that we were seeing a blob in 11 of the 12 eggs that suggested chicks could be developing (but it really wasn't clear what the blobs were).
One had no "blob" so we were pretty sure that one wasn't fertile. We threw that one out...no need to be incubating an that likely had no chick and could get stinky fast!
What's that noise?
On Day 19, we heard a little chirping noise, almost like we had a cricket the house. With high ceilings and a hardwood floor, and the windows open, we had no idea where that noise was coming from.
After mindlessly walking around the house trying to pinpoint where the noise was coming from, we figured out the noise was the incubator. An egg was "pipping" -- a chick insdie starting to peep. Soon, we heard a chorus of peeping. No broken open eggs, just peeping.
OMGosh, one hatched!
A baby check appeared later in the day, on Day 20, in the late afternoon. Ugly as all get out-- wet and matted and flopping around. What do we do? Is it normal for a chick to do that? Who knows, we decided to let it be and hoped that it would OK.
Three hours later, it began looking like a fluffy baby chick, barely able to keep its eyes open. It would stand up and then fall forward and look dead (turns out it was just sleeping, clearly it takes a lot of energy to try to stand up!).
In the two days that followed, 10 more babies hatched.
What have we learned?
Trust the process!
It turns out that you can be a complete novice at this, have no idea what your doing, and still be successful if you have these five things:
👉 have fertizlied eggs
👉have an incubator that keeps the correct temperature (100 degrees F)
👉have an incubator that rotates the eggs daily (or they get rotated manually)
👉have an inclubator that keeps has a high enough humidity (and you check that regularly)
And, of course...
👉patience!
Curious as to what these cute babies look like? Stay tuend for the next post!