Warming it Up!

Our heat pump just doesn't do the job in winter.  I'm not a fan.  It just doesn't do an adequate job of keeping the house warm.  We've kind of thrown in the towel and keep roaring fires going in our fireplace as we sit in front of it each night.  Our nightly routine while warming in front of the fire is watching "All Creatures Great and Small" and then playing Solitaire together.  I think we have one more cold snap this weekend and then it looks to be more balmy for at least the next week.

We're not the only thing that's cold.  Our honey is too!  Raw honey will crystallize in the winter.  Although a nuisance, it's the way you know you're getting the good stuff.  We have case after case of honey that has all crystallized.  Just like this!:

Many people just put it in the microwave and nuke it, but don't do that!  You'll cook all the good stuff out of it.  You want to gradually warm it, but never let it get more than 104 degrees Fahrenheit or you'll destroy the nutrients, enzymes and health benefits you naturally get from raw local honey.  Some people will put it on the dash of their vehicle in the sun to liquify it, some have built solar heat boxes to liquify it.

We've come up with an idea that works for us.  We use our egg incubator to gently warm the honey.  The issue we dealt with is that the incubator has warming coils on top but not at the bottom.  This resulted in the honey liquifying on top but not on the bottom.  To solve this, we placed a bread proofing heating pad on the bottom.  Now the honey is getting heated from top to bottom and we're monitoring the temperature that's on a thermostat to ensure we never get the honey too hot.

Let's peek in the incubator to see how things are going.  Compare the first photo above with this one.  You can see that the honey in the incubator is about three quarters of the way toward becoming liquid again.

As we sell the honey, we rotate crystallized jars of honey from the box and into the incubator so that the honey goes from the solid state to a liquid one.

Learning A Life Lesson From an Old Saying

 "Don't Count Your Chickens Before they Hatch"

We've all heard that adage.  It means to not get too confident in your plans counting on the most favorable outcomes.  Getting your hopes too high leads to disappointment.  Temper your expectations.  

We put 42 (supposedly) fertile eggs in our incubator 21 days ago hoping to get some laying hens to replace those lost due to the deadly mink ordeal.  I immediately did the math.  Last year, if memory serves, we achieved a 75% hatch rate.  Assuming similar results, we'd hatch out 31 (roughly) chicks since you can't hatch out 31.5 chicks.  Of the 31 eggs about half would be roosters.  That would leave us with 15 hens.  All that assumes no mortality on hatched out chicks - a big assumption.

Of course, we could buy baby chicks from the store, but they're $5.99 a piece right now!!  Plus, I'm reading that stores are tracking people that purchase baby chicks and reporting their location to the USDA because of the bird flu situation.  Something doesn't sit right with me about that with privacy and all.  You know the old saying about the camel's nose under the tent and all that...  No thanks, we'll hatch out our own chicks.

On day 21 Tricia heard "cheep, cheep, cheep" coming from the room where we had the incubator.  Chicks were pecking out of the eggs!  I gently lifted the rotating cradle that moves the eggs from side to side out of the incubator and began taking the eggs out one by one to lay on the bottom of the incubator.  If you don't, baby chicks could get injured between the rotating cradle, even though it moves very slow.  You can see one of the chick's beak pecking out of the egg below.

Mission accomplished.  All of the eggs are laid out.  Now we wait...

Here is the first freshly hatched chicks all wet from the egg.  That's an ugly little creature if you ever saw one, isn't it?

Pretty soon, though, they dry off.  When they are dry, I move them outside into the garage, where I have our makeshift brooder set up.  Here is the mugshot of the first chick.

And here is the profile shot of the same bird.

I poke their little heads down in the water so they'll drink.  The water has a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar in it.  Then I set each one down in the brooder with some non-medicated chick grower so they can start scratching and eating.

I run back to the incubator where more have hatched out.

We gathered the eggs over 3 days, so gradually chicks hatched out over the next 3 days.  Here they are under heat lamps in the brooder where they'll grow for a week and we'll move them outside into this same brooder that we'll set up in a chicken tractor.

When the dust settled, we only hatched out 16 eggs.  That is a dismal 38% hatch rate.  We'll likely get 8 laying hens to add to the flock.  We'll also get 8 roosters that we'll butcher and put in the freezer for chicken & sausage gumbo.  That's not fantastic, but it's 8 more hens to add to the flock, so we're not going to belly-ache about it.  And we'll remember to not count our chickens before they hatch.  We'll also remember, "If at first you don't succeed, try try again."

Investing in the Future

I've heard that egg prices at the grocery store are pretty high due to this bird flu thing.  Our birds are healthy, the days are getting longer, and today they laid 17 eggs.  We eat all we can, give some to the boys and sell the rest.  But, since the minks decimated the flock last year, we haven't really recovered.  We were down to 9 hens.  That's the lowest amount we ever had, I believe, since we started.  Fortunately, we had another batch of hens in the chicken tractor in our yard when the mink started their killing spree.  The ones in the yard were spared.  I think I counted 24 hens this afternoon.

I figure it is time to increase the numbers of the flock.  I searched the hatcheries online from whence we normally order day old chicks.  Holy Moly!  Straight run (probably 50-50 hen/rooster ratio) are $4 per chick, and all female chicks are $4.65 per chick.  That's steep.  We opted to save 42 eggs from our flock.  This means we forego eating them and forego selling them, but delayed gratification is where it's at.  After about 4 days, I had enough saved to fill the incubator.

42 eggs in all will fit in the incubator.  It will be a mixed bag, for sure.  We have Rhode Island Reds, Golden Comets, Aracaunas, and Barred Rock birds.  They are all mixed up, though.  No telling what we'll get.  Last time we hatched some out, we got a 74% hatch rate and about 50% were roosters.  The roosters are butchered and made into chicken and sausage gumbo.  The hens are incorporated into the flock and begin laying eggs at around 5 1/2 months from hatch.

I placed the eggs in the incubator and plugged it in.  The incubator has an egg turner that slowly shifts the eggs.  This is helpful as it keeps you from having to rotate them.  I added water into the reservoir at the bottom that serves to keep the humidity just right in the incubator.  The goal is to try to keep the eggs at 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  I had just turned it on, so it took a little while to warm it up, but we found that the thermostat was set perfectly.

So there is the scoreboard.  We know when they were put in the incubator and how many, and when the chicks should hatch out.

We've learned there is truth to the old adage, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch."  In three weeks, we'll certainly check in on the chicks and report our hatch rate to you.

Don't Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch (Part II)

Our first batch of chicks are five weeks old and are growing and very active.  They are out in the chicken tractor.  We decided to get a second batch going on the incubator to replace those in our existing flock that were lost to predators or just old age.  So on March 10th we put 42 eggs in the incubator from eggs collected on the 9th and 10th.  That meant on March 31st, we'd have our next hatch as long as we kept the incubator at 100.5 F and the humidity right by keeping water in the reservoir.

Two days before the hatch, we were to remove the egg rotation tray and set the eggs flat on the floor of the incubator.  BUT, one chick decided to hatch out early.  Tricia quickly removed the rotator.  If you don't remove it, you run the risk of the tray crushing the baby chicks.  On the 30th and 31st, the chicks started breaking out of their shells.

As they dried off, we'd put them in a box and bring them outside to the brooder and set them under a heat lamp.  We originally had Barred Rock chickens.  Then we got some Rhode Island Reds and then Aracaunas.  Then we purchased some Golden Comet hens from one of Benjamin's friends.  Golden Comets are a cross between Rhode Island Reds and White Leghorns.  They are prolific layers of brown eggs.  Now, our flock is Heinz 57!  There is a lot of diversity out there.  

Here is one little hen, we hope.  It looks like a Golden Comet.

Here is one of the Golden Comets from the first batch.  We're only going to keep the hens.  We will butcher and eat the roosters.

Statistics from the first hatch:  (42 eggs)

Put in incubator            Hatch Date        Hatch        Lived

2/6/2023                    2/27/2023                25                19

3/10/2023                    3/30/2023              27                26

With the second hatch, we took the 15 eggs that did not hatch and went out to the compost pile.  We busted them open to see what happened.  Of the 15 that didn't hatch, only 4 were not fertile.  10 were fully developed, but did not make it out of the egg, for some reason.  1 was not fully developed.

Our neighbor came over and talked to us.  He raised quail at one time and would hatch out thousands of quail.  He told us that he swore by setting them in the incubator based on the stages of the moon.  He also mentioned that the time of day you set them in the incubator determines to a large extent the sex of the chicks.  I'm not sure about that.  I couldn't find anything to back that up.

However, I did find in the Farmer's Almanac that chicks that hatch just before a full moon would be stronger and have a better chance at survival.  It even had the best dates for setting eggs.  March 7, 8, and 9 were the best days.  Well, we set them ALMOST exactly on that date.  I checked back to the best February dates and we set them ALMOST on the best date, too.  For some reason, we're only achieving roughly a 60-64% hatch rate.

Hopefully we'll be able to get most of these to maturity - either for egg layers for for gumbo!

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!

Don't Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch

The wife and I have been talking.  Egg prices (and other grocery items) keep rising.  We've seen an increase in customer's purchases of our eggs and realized the reason - prices for store-bought eggs have skyrocketed.  We never buy eggs at the store so we were oblivious to egg prices!  Wow.  

As we looked out in the pasture and saw one of the rooster doing... rooster things, we decided it was time to collect some eggs since they should be fertilized, and put them in our incubator and hatch out some chicks.  We hadn't incubated any in several years.  The chickens haven't yet hit that BOOM in egg production we usually see in mid to late February, but we decided to save eggs until we could fill the incubator.

The first day we collected a dozen.  The next day nine.  The next day ten.  Finally, today we picked up a dozen.  With that we had slightly more than enough to fill the 42 slots in our incubator.  It is okay to keep eggs up to 5-7 days at a temperature of > 55 degrees to hold for incubating.  We didn't wash the eggs prior to placing them in the egg turning trays.

I got out the old Hovabator incubator down from the top shelf of the utility room.  It was full of dust, so I wiped it down.  Then I read the instructions to re-familiarize myself with the process.  I plugged in the egg turning tray to ensure it still worked.  Check.  Then I checked out the thermometers for accurate readings.  Check.  Then I plugged in the heating element and fan.  Check.  I poured some warm water into the recessed portion of the bottom of the incubator for humidity.  We labeled the top showing that at 8:20 pm on Feb 6th we put 42 eggs in the incubator.  

These chickens, if they hatch, will be a diverse brood.  We have Rhode Island Reds, Barred Rocks, Aracauna, Black Star, and Golden Comet hens.  Our roosters are Rhode Island Reds and another unknown breed.  I placed the thermometers (one mercury and one digital) atop the egg turning trays and plugged the incubator in and checked every ten minutes to watch the temperature rise.  At 9:08 pm it was 79.8 degrees.  At 9:30 pm it was 84.5 degrees.  Movin' on up...

We want it to get to 100.5 and stay there.  Chicken eggs hatch in 21 days.

We'll continue watching tonight until the temperature reaches 100.5 and stabilizes.  The incubator hasn't been used in quite a while and we want to ensure the temperature holds where it's supposed to.  We want to incubate eggs - not cook 'em!  This will be a fun project to watch.  We'll keep you posted.

The Hatch!

I mentioned in This post three weeks ago that Benjamin wanted to put some of our hens' eggs into our little incubator and hatch out some baby chicks.  We like to do this each year to insert 'fresh hens' into our flock. As hens get older, they lay fewer eggs. We've also had a few hens die of old age that we wanted to replace. So on Monday August 4th, Benjamin gathered the eggs from the nesting spots we have in the barn, chicken tractor, and hen house and we put them in the incubator that evening, marking the calendar 21 days in advance.  On the evening of Monday, August 25th, we should have babies!

We checked the thermostat on the incubator each day, ensuring that we maintained a fairly constant 98 - 100 degree temperature range.  We also kept the center reservoir full of water to provide humidity. (Not that we need additional humidity in South Louisiana!!)  On Saturday morning I planned to remove the egg rotator and set the eggs down on the screen and fill the remaining reservoirs with water in addition to removing the two plugs in the top of the incubator to allow for fresh air circulation.

Saturday morning, lo and behold, Tricia was awakened by a "Cheep, Cheep, Cheep!" noise coming from the incubator.  One had already hatched, so I hurriedly did my work and prepared for more baby chicks.  No matter how many times you do this, it is always exciting.  New life is a blessing!  Benjamin excitedly came running to watch the process unfold.

You can see the chicks using their beaks to break tiny holes in the eggs.

The early bird...

They continue pecking and pecking until they finally break the egg in two:

Getting claustrophobic in there!

With a little more work, the little bird is able to stretch and get his head out.

Now you are supposed to leave the top on the incubator so that the heating coils dry off the little birds, only opening it once a day when they are dry to remove the baby chicks to the brooder.

Drying off

It seems when once hatches, they all start popping out of their eggs.  Once they are dry, I'll remove them and remove the broken egg shells to allow for more room for the other chicks that are on the way.  Benjamin repeatedly ran to the incubator, looked through the windows and shouted, "Another one's on the way!"

They are so ugly when they first come out of the egg...

Not a beauty contestant!

But in no time at all, they become pretty little birds!

When the babies are dried off, we open the incubator and put them in a bucket and carry them outside.  I have our brooder set up in the garage, and we'll leave them there under a heat lamp and allow them to grow for a while before moving them out to the pasture on grass.

A 'Bucket of Chicken'

The first thing we do is Benjamin dunks their little heads into the waterer to allow them to get their first drink of water.

Thirsty?

Then we put them under the heat lamp in the brooder that I've lined with hay.  They stay warm and continue to fully dry and gain their strength.  We have a little newspaper laid out with some Chick feed sprinkled on it. It is interesting how their instincts kick in and they start scratching and pecking at the feed almost immediately. Our brooder is a homemade contraption.  In true redneck form, we had an old sofa that I didn't feel like hauling to the dump, so I took it apart and used the lumber from the sofa frame to make a chicken brooder. The couch on which I used to lay, became a chick brooder where baby chicks play!

The Brooder

Since we have a number of different breeds of hens and roosters, the breeds will vary and there are many combinations of chicks of all colors/breeds.

Benjamin's favorite

In just a few hours the little puff balls are running around!  They are so healthy and playful.  It is hard to imagine that they were inside an egg just a short time ago.

The new babies

Out of 42 eggs we put in the incubator, we hatched out 29.  One died shortly after hatching, so we ended up with 28 chicks, resulting in a 67% hatch rate.  Not great, but not that bad.  I'm assuming that some of the eggs were not fertilized, but I'll confirm that later today.  

Cheep, Cheep, Cheep!

I'll take the eggs that didn't hatch and I'll dig a hole in the garden and throw them in the hole.  The contents of the egg will add to the soil.  Even though the eggs weren't fertile, they'll fertilize the garden soil and grow good crops.

Close up baby portraits

It'll be exciting to watch the chicks grow.  Generally, you can count on roughly 50% being females and 50% being males, meaning that we'll likely end up with 14 new hens. The 14 roosters will make a nice chicken fricassee!  The hens will generally start laying eggs in about 24 weeks. 

Our 'Electric' Hen

Our hens get 'broody' from time to time and want to set on their eggs.  To this point we've not had success in them ever hatching out chicks with one exception.  One time a hen laid eggs in a "secret nest" up in the loft of the barn.  We heard at least one chick and saw the newborn chick running up on top of the hay bales, but never saw any chicks after that.  I assume that a rat or some other critter got it.

One thing that we have had success with the couple of times we've done it was incubating our hens' eggs with our Hova-bator Incubator: Our electric hen!  We ordered it online about 5 years or so ago from one of the Hatcheries (Murray McMurray, I think) and it cost about $75, if I remember correctly.  It is a simple little device that will save you some money as Barred Rock Chickens (straight run) will cost you $2.35 a piece!  The incubator will hold 42 eggs. The incubator has more than paid for itself in the times we've used it.

We decided it was time to fill up the incubator and try to hatch out some more.  The rule of thumb from what I've read is that you need to have around 1 rooster for every 10 hens to ensure that your eggs are fertilized. We have plenty of roosters strutting around the pasture and they are always romancing the hens, so I'm pretty sure a high percentage of the eggs are fertilized.

Benjamin gathered the eggs like he always does in the late afternoon, but he was excited today, because he wasn't going to have to wash them and pack them in cartons.  These, instead of going in the fridge for our use or our customers' use, were going to go in the incubator.  We need to replace some of our older hens with new, fresh hens in order to keep egg production constant.  Some of our old girls have been laying for years and years.

The Eggman

I had been working on the thermostat for the incubator, getting it adjusted properly where it would hold a pretty constant temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  I ran it for about a day until I got it all stabilized.

In addition to keeping the temperature at a constant level, it is important that the humidity is right, too.  The directions say to fill the center trough with water and keep it filled by adding water every few days.  At the very end, with 2 to 3 days left until the hatch, you are to fill all the troughs with water.

Adding H2O to the center trough

We have a little electric turner that slowly rotates the eggs back and forth.  This replicates what a real hen will do in moving them around.  You load the eggs in the turner with the small (or pointy) ends facing down. Benjamin got busy loading the turner.  There were a few eggs that had some poop on them and we left those out. Only the clean eggs without cracks went into the incubator.

Loading the incubator

Finally we got it all loaded.  As you can see, the Hovabator Incubator will hold 42 eggs.  Here's the thing with hatching your own eggs - normally, experience has shown us that you can pretty much count on 50% hens and 50% roosters, so if every egg hatches (which rarely happens) only half will be hens.  The roosters... Well, the roosters will be raised until they are 'eating size,' then they'll be butchered and will make a nice gumbo or fricassee.

The other thing about hatching out these eggs is that some (or a lot) of these chicks will be mixed breed.  We have Barred Rock, Rhode Island Red, Aracauna, and Black Star hens and roosters running around on the pasture.  We don't keep them separated by breed, so we'll just get what we get.  An egg is an egg is an egg as far as making omelets go!  Look at those eggs.  Aren't they pretty?  I always think that 'country eggs' are just nice to look at.

Pretty eggs of all shade.

We placed the thermometer on top of the eggs and we'll watch it each day, several times a day to ensure that the temperature stays steady at 100 degrees F.  We had the top off of the incubator and you can see that the temperature reading is room temperature, 77 - 78 degrees.  Once we put the top on it, the temperature will increase as the incubator warms until it hits 100 degrees and then the thermostat will cut it off.

Watching as the mercury rises

There is a window on top of the incubator so that you can see the eggs, the turner and the thermometer. There are also two vent holes that are plugged with red plastic plugs.  You can only see one of them at the top.  These plugs should be opened if excessive humidity causes water drops to form on the glass.  There is also a red light (bottom right) that lights up when the little warmer clicks on and turns off once the thermostat cuts it off.

Our electric hen at work

We will continue to monitor things daily.  Chicken eggs take 21 days to hatch, so if my math is right, hopefully we'll be seeing our first baby chicks beginning somewhere in the evening of Monday, August 25th. The anticipation of new life is something that never loses a sense of awe and anticipation.  We'll keep you posted on the progress. What came first, the chicken or the egg?  Why, what a silly question.  The chicken came first.