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March 21, 2011
We Have EGGS!
Wooo Hoooo! The chickens are officially on their way. Last Friday I received my 1st hatching eggs! They got here at noon and to my surprise the wonderful seller sent me 8 EXTRAS!!! Here are my eggs straight out of the box! I stupidly hadn't thought to save any egg cartons so I used what I could find in my excitement. Or should I say... EGGcitement!!!!! Haha - I know, I'm a dork.
And here they are "resting" on top of my awesome new incubator to let the air sac settle in the fat end of the egg after shipping. Shipped eggs can be troublesome so here's hoping that they're going to be ok.
And Saturday at 7:00 into the bator they went!!!
So in the photo below from left to right are the following eggs: 3 Black/Lavender Orpingtons, 6 Welsummers, 3 Coronation/Light Sussex, 4 Blue Laced Red Wyandottes, and 4 French Black Copper Marans!!!
My incubator is doing a fantastic job and I have high hopes for my eggs. However, remember all of those great big fluffy legged chickens I showed you pictures of?? Well... they were supposed to get here at the same time and all the eggs were going to incubate together. However, those eggs were delayed and just shipped out today!!! This creates a big problemo for me. I had to set these eggs so they wouldn't get too old. BUT, the last 3 days of incubation you have to go through a seperate process than the rest of the incubation period, which I can't do with younger eggs in the incubator. SO, I decided to try my hand at making a homemade hatcher. Here's what I've come up with and as of today it is holding both temperature and humidity PERFECTLY!!!!! We'll see how things continue, but I've got 16 days to get it just right. Here she is!
This hatcher is set up in our family room so even though it was a bit of a pain it will be more spacious for the little chicks that hatch and will be very convenient for hatch watching! Oh, I hope they hatch! If all goes well we are looking at baby chicks starting to hatch the weekend of April 9/10!!! Whoooopppppiiiiiiiiieeeeee!!!!!
Oh, but not a lot of progress on the coop this weekend. Too much darn basketball. But, I did manage to get together a nice sketch and materials list and priced out some things at Lowes. We neeeded to figure out our roofing and a few other things. So not a total loss! But HELLO, we have chicks on the way at this very moment! We need a coop!!!!!!
Stay tuned!!!!!!!
March 28, 2011
Quickie Chicken Update
Well... not a lot to report. Just a bunch of turning eggs, candling them just for fun, making coop plans, etc. However, I did totally score with a Craigslist find!!! ALL of this treated lumber was FREE!!!!!
Reusing materials and spending less money are two very good things!
And then, here's our last set of eggs! They just arrived today and will go in the incubator tomorrow. Aren't they purty!?!?
These are 7 beautiful pure blue, black, and splash Ameraucana eggs. And I am so nervous about them! This stupid freezing cold weather that they've traveled through, combined with a Sunday stay in postal never-neverland has me a bit worried. They were really cold to the touch when they arrived. I hope they hatch!!!!!!
And last bit of progress - I ordered my organic chicken feed today! I've decided on using Countryside Organics (www.countrysidenatural.com) after reading nothing but wonderful things about their products and luckily there is a supplier right here in the area - Horseshoe Bend Farm! I have my order in that will hopefully last through our first four months of chicken raisin'!
Well that's all for now. Hopefully I'll have exciting coop progress to report and then less than two weeks till my first batch of chicks is due!!! Oh boy!
April 4, 2011
Chicken Coop Update! :-)
We have progress! With lots of help from Lane and Nicole (my brother and future sister-in-law) we made some headway this past weekend! All of the posts for the run are up! We have a trench well on its way around the run to help keep the run from becoming a muddy mess when it rains, and big pile o' gravel to fill it up with. Here's how it's looking!
Impressive, huh!?
So as far as our chicken eggs go we have both good news and bad. My first set of 20 eggs is down to 16. Not bad! Those 16 are looking good and will be going into "lockdown" in my homemade hatcher in just 2 DAYS!!! And their big hatch day is Saturday! Could be earlier, could be later, but somewhere around this weekend we should have baby chicks!!! Woohoo!!! My next group of eggs is my Cochin eggs. Started as 17, then down to 14, and now down to a little old 8. And of those 8, I really only feel like 3 of them have a chance. All that we cracked open showed no signs of fertility. I'm pretty bummed about them, but it seems this is the way it can go with hatching eggs sometimes. We'll see how many healthy chicks hatch in total and then I'll decide if I'm up for trying another round of cochins or not. My last set of eggs are the 7 beautiful blue Ameraucana eggs. And I'm happy to say they are all looking good so far!
Now off to AgriSupply with Will. We're going to make the most of this gorgeous day and get a little done out there! Wish us luck!!
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Maggie again. Isn't this exciting?! Next up: eggs on LOCKDOWN!
Okay, I'm hooked on Chicken Watch '11! I can't wait for the next update.
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