Chicken incubation experiment, round 2
We've started on phase two of
our chick-raising plan. I know, I know, we've already got two
heaping handfuls of chicks out in the coop, but they're
only going to put a small dent in my chicken goals for the year, which
include:
- About five new hens to replace our old birds
- Two hens of a broody variety to make incubation easier in 2012
- 25 broilers to go in the freezer
For round two, we splurged
and bought a Brinsea Octagon 20 incubator. I'm hoping the larger
capacity (it holds 24 hen eggs) will result in multiple living chicks
even if my hatch
rate continues to be
terrible. The new incubator monitors humidity as well as
temperature, which will make it more likely that chicks will survive (I
hope.)
In addition to saving up
enough of our eggs to pop in the incubator, we ordered hatching eggs
online. The eggs were pricey --- I could have gotten chicks for
nearly the same cost! --- but I want to learn incubation and am excited
to be adding Cuckoo Marans to our flock since this variety is what
Harvey Ussery uses as mother hens. My goal for hatch two is to
double my previous hatching rate and end up with at least seven living
chicks, which just might be enough to give us the two broody hens I
crave.
Meanwhile, we had one small
setback in the coop this past weekend --- a rat broke in and hauled off
two chicks, leaving behind one dead and fourteen alive. I'd read
that rats are a huge problem with young chicks, but had previously kept
our youngsters in the house until week three, which prevented predation
problems. Although the losses were preventable, I consider the
current system better than the alternative. Yes, we could keep
the chicks inside longer or we could turn their outside home into a
rat-proof cage, but I really like the way the chicks' current living
arrangement has them foraging from day one and allows them to bask in
the sun. My hope is that the surviving chicks will be more wilely
and better pasture animals. Can you tell that I'm working on
emotional detachment from the farm animals?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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