Hatch Report

Yesterday was exhausting, in a good way.

The first chick showed up Monday morning. By Monday night, we had five. Two more hatched overnight for a total of seven in the incubator when I woke up yesterday morning. The remainder of the eggs continued to hatch, in fits and spurts, until yesterday afternoon, and now we have a total of 17 chicks. They all have been moved to the brooder box in the laundry room where they are eating like there is no tomorrow.

Although I know better than to interfere with a natural process, I didn’t want to leave the kitchen while all of this was happening. I needed to keep an eye on the humidity and temperature levels in the incubator, and let’s be honest—watching chicks hatch is fascinating. I was even able to go over and alert our renter so she could bring their 3 year-old daughter to watch one just as it emerged from its shell.

Baby chicks have this habit of staggering around drunkenly, then flopping over and falling asleep instantly, and if you’re not familiar with the way that looks, you think the chick is dead. It also takes them a few hours to dry off and fluff up. Until then, they look sort of the like miniature versions of the monster in the movie Alien.

I did lose two chicks in the process; they started to pip and then stopped, and when it was clear the chicks inside were dead, I took the eggs out of the incubator so they wouldn’t contaminate anything. The causes for that, according to what I have read, are either too much humidity (the chick drowns from moisture condensing inside the shell) or too little humidity (the membrane dries out and basically shrink wraps the chick). The recommended humidity range is 60% to 80%. I was very careful not to let the humidity drop below 70% as I was removing older chicks to the brooder, but at one point, when three or four chicks had hatched in rapid succession, the humidity did get up to about 85%. The chicks are wet when they come out and that raises the humidity level in the incubator. I put a small cup of rice inside the incubator and that helped to absorb the excess water.

I am not sure how to avoid that problem of chicks not hatching other than to incubate fewer eggs next time. Some sources advise not to take any chicks out until every egg is finished hatching, but this hatch ran for over 36 hours. I couldn’t have left all the chicks in the incubator for that length of time. There simply wasn’t room.

For my first attempt, though, I am pretty pleased. That’s a hatch rate of 89% of fertile eggs. Even some hens don’t do that well.

I am also having fun trying to figure out what kinds of chickens these babies came from. Our rooster is a purebred Buff Orpington, but we have Black Australorp, White Orpington, Buff Orpington, New Hampshire Reds, Barred Rocks, and Light Brahma hens. Most of the chicks look like Orps of one kind or another, but at least one came from a Barred Rock mama and one from a Light Brahma. The Brahmas are big chickens, even bigger than the rooster, so I am not surprised he isn’t as successful with them as with the other hens. Now we wait to find out how many are males and how many are females.

The rooster got an extra helping of scratch grains and some praise yesterday for his part in this whole operation.

We’re going to keep the chicks inside the house for another day because we are supposed to get a storm with cold temperatures tonight. Our makeshift brooder box is sitting on top of the washing machine and is working surprisingly well, other than I can’t do laundry at the moment.

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I haven’t done much sewing this week, but I needed a break anyway. I’ve got my phone visit with the naturopath this morning. I was hoping to get the other two hoops up in the garden, but I think I am going to wait until after this storm. The cowpeas won’t like it if I put them out in the garden and it gets down to 25 degrees tonight, even if they are under cover.

The potatoes are coming up!

And the peas are up. The rhubarb looks good. The raspberries have leafed out and the grapes shouldn’t be far behind. Yay.