Chickachick- Ah!

Up above we have these guys brooder. I only had a little box, i will get them  bigger one over the next couple of days. One cheeky chap has popped out from under the brooding plate to have a look around.

I prefer to use a brooding plate rather than a heat lamp for my chicks.  I feel it gives them a more natural experience, as hiding under a mother hen they would be warm and cosy and dark.

The brooder plate also uses less electricity than a traditional heat lamp, at only 20watts. There is also less risk of it causing a fire, which is a really big concern of mine as they are in my house.

They will stay in here for a few weeks, after which i will transition them with their brooding plate to the outside coop, separate from the older ladies until they are of a size when they can hold their own

 

Hatching Day!

The most exciting of all days!

Yesterday evening, we had a pip. A little hole in the egg where the chick has used its egg tooth to crack the surface slightly. Exciting!

But... when i got up this morning, nothing had changed. Disappointed face.

About 9:30 though, this had happened.

The crack grew wider as the chicken unzipped (or slowly pecked with its egg tooth in an anticlockwise direction around the egg)

And he's out!

 He hatched around 10:30 am

The white spot on his head declares this one a boy.

Here he is!

The second to hatch was egg no4, and this one looks to be a girl, but we will see better when she's dried out a bit.

Hey Bro! Get off my egg! I'm trying to hatch here!

I'll update here as the others hatch.

UPDATE

2 boys and a girl so far. 1 more egg to go. So far the remaining egg has had a few wobbles, but no cracks have appeared yet.

UPDATE 2

So we are all hatched out. 2 boys. 2 girls and 2 that didnt develop.

That seems to be a pretty typical hatch rate for me. The past couple of years i ended up with a chick that died at the hatching stage, which didnt happen this time, so thats a bonus!

I have another batch of eggs here ready to go in, so the incubator wont be empty for long. I'll get it washed and sterilised and on the go again!

I'll put up a new post with cute chick pictures.

Disaster! (but i hope not!)

Our electric ran out overnight.

Silly me thought it would last till this morning, but we must have used more than I thought over the weekend.

I threw a towel over the incubator, and rushed to get more. It was only off for an hour, but it was long enough for the incubator temperature to drop to 31 degrees Celsius :( . I hope that the internal egg temperature didn't drop too much and that they will hatch as expected tomorrow. Only time will tell.

Its going to be a nervous 24 hours.


UPDATE!

We have our first pip!!

And so it begins!

Chick Update!

3 days to go!!

Today I stop turning them in their incubator. This is so that they have a chance to orient themselves in their eggs so that they are in the correct position for hatching. If they are in the wrong position, they may not break out into the air sack, and drown. We don't want this, so we give them a couple of days to sort themselves out.

We also need to increase the humidity inside the incubator. The egg has an inner membrane which is very soft and flexible which the chick needs to break through. I am sure you have seen it at some point when cooking eggs, that membrane you can peel away. Have you seen it once the egg has been open for a couple of hours? This membrane goes really tough and hard to break. We increase the humidity to stop it going tough. A chick can take up to 24 hours to hatch from its egg, and if that membrane goes hard, then it can be fatal for the chick. So we need a little extra moisture in the air.

My incubator is a Brinsea mini eco.  Its a basic model, but it has been such a good incubator.  It holds a temperature really steady, I only ever have to adjust it during the setting up stage.

The water pot on the mini eco is divided into 2 halves. During the first phase of incubation (up until now) we filled half of the pot. This is so that the air sac in the egg could develop properly while still keeping the air humid and warm. Now we need to fill both sides to make the humidity rise for hatching.

Im upgrading the adult chickens living area at the moment (details to come in another post!), but as soon as i am done with that i will be setting up the brooder for when these little ones hatch. Not long now!

Drying Chillis

I bought these chillies last week from ALDI, as they were on offer.

We don't use chillies often, but I like them, so I thought for that price, i could dry some and have them on hand, which is what I am doing today.

My lot don't like spicy food, so I am removing the seeds to cool the heat down a bit, and i am laying them out on a baking tray.

I preheated the oven to 130 degrees, and the chillies went in quite low down in the oven. I left them for around 3 hours, checking on them sporadically, until they were completely dry.

(I think I might have left them a little too long! Ooops!)

I then just popped them in a sandwich bag, and into my spice drawer to use later.

Still on a making kick!

I'm on a crafting mission at the moment.

I had a new delivery of roving wool on tuesday, so i have been doing more spinning. I really love the colours on this corriedale wool.

These pictures make the colours look a little washed out, but believe me they are so jewel-like and beautiful. Keira wants some of this wool plaited into her hair for her Prom.

I have also been crocheting. I have finished Keiras blanket, and moved on to Imogens.

I'm using  different stitch this time. I am using Crochet Geeks abstract cat afghan crochet pattern.  It can be found here: http://www.crochetgeek.com/2009/04/abstract-crochet-cats.html

Im liking the way it is working up. Imogen chose her colours.

Also last week, i got the urge to make a friend a last minute birthday gift. I had bought her a colouring book and some new pencils, but i felt she needed something to put her new pencils in.

So I made this:

I had everything in my fabric box already, and i had thought for a while that the fabric was perfect for her, I just hadnt thought of a project for them both. Everything fell into place and she was so pleased with her gift. It made me smile.

Chick Update: They look like eggs.  But we are edging closer to the exciting days.

5 days to go! 

Day 13

8 days to go!

I checked in on the eggs this evening, and it looks like the one i wasnt sure about has definitely stopped growing. So we are down to 4 :(

I couldnt get good pics because at this stage the egg is almost completely dark as the chick is starting to take up the majority of the egg. There is a light spot toward the fat end of the egg, which is the air sac. At around day 20, the chick will break through its membrane with its beak and breath for the first time from the air in the air sac, which will stimulate hatching, so it important that this sac is developing well. If it is too small, it could be because the incubators humidity is too high.