The Hatch!

We've had 42 eggs from our hens on the incubator.  We watched the roosters and saw that they were "being romantic" with the hens.  Then we collected eggs for three days and filled the incubator with them.  Our little incubator has a rotator that automatically turns them.  We monitored the temperature and ensured that it stayed at 100 degrees.

At one point all of our chickens were Barred Rocks.  Then we got some Aracaunas because we like the blue and green eggs.  Then we got Rhode Island Reds because they are a prolific brown egg layer.  Later people gave us some hens and roosters they no longer wanted.  Over the years our flock has become a 'melting pot' of sorts.  

On Friday evening, we removed the egg rotator and just laid the eggs on the floor of the incubator.  The rotator could crush them.  Saturday we started to hear baby chicks.  For the next 3 days, the chicks hatched out.  You can see we have black chicks, white chicks, red chicks and yellow chicks.  We also have some that are brown and black.  They're all cute little things.

As they dried under the heat of the incubator, we moved them and the broken egg shells out to make room for the chicks yet to hatch out.

We brought them outside to our little brooder we have set up in the back yard.  It's neat to watch their instincts.  One day old and when we put the heat lamp on, it attracted bugs.  The baby chicks immediately started eating bugs.

After 3 days passed, we gave up hope for the remaining to hatch.  There were 17 eggs (of the 42 that didn't hatch out.  Feel blessed that you aren't smelling what this smells like!  The eggs and liquid in the bottom of the incubator is really, really smelly.  I brought these out to the garden and put them in the compost pile.

One of the 17 eggs that didn't hatch, had a chick inside that couldn't quite make it out.  She had pecked, but couldn't complete the job.  The other 16 must not have been fertilized, although I didn't want to break them open to confirm.

Here's a cool looking little chick!

This one, I think, is a cross between a Rhode Island Red and an Aracauna.

So out of the 42 eggs originally put in the incubator, 17 did not hatch.  That left us with 25 baby chicks.  Four of those babies died.  We currently have 21.  A 50% survival rate.  Here's the other thing we learned: Half of those will be hens.  So only 10 of those will actually be egg layers.  That's what we're trying to do is add layers to our existing flock to make up for those that have died of old age and predation.  We may have to get another batch of eggs in the incubator!