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."