Hatch Day is Here

Well three little balls of fluff jumped the gun and hatched yesterday, and I woke at 5:30am by Peggie whining at the foot of my bed, to find another freshly hatched in the incubator. I went back to sleep only to be woken up in the same manner at 9am, with a second out it's egg. It was absolutely fascinating watching them push their way out of their shells and bumbling around in the incubator drying out.

As of 9pm I have 11 baby chickens! Nine are already fluffy and in the brooder box, and two are still in the incubator, as they are not yet dry and fluffy enough to be moved.

I have 5 eggs left in the incubator, 3 have started to hatch, but two aren’t showing any signs yet but that doesn’t surprise me as the day 17 candling showed two that might have been dead in the shell. I have a feeling the rest will be out by tomorrow.

Day 20-Hatching has started

Well today is day 20 of the eggs incubation. They are due to start hatching tomorrow, so imagine my surprise when I look in the incubator this morning to find, not one, but THREE eggs have pipped!

Pipping is when the baby chick breaks a hole in the shell and membrane of the egg to start breathing and then once they have gotten used to breathing air with their lungs, they will start to chip open the egg to emerge into the big outside world.

It can take up to 24 hours for the chickens to emerge from their shells, so watch this space for more updates!

Day 17 Candling

Well the eggs are coming along nicely, only a few more days to go!
I did another candling to see how the development was going. All but two are going well. The two I’m not so sure about had a lot more yolk visable and weren’t as dark as the rest. I couldn’t see any movement either, so they are probably dead in the shell. The eggs will stay in the incubator until hatch day, just in case.
Dead in shell[?]. I can’t see any visable chick shape, but can still see blood vessels and a lot of the yolk.

Well developing egg. The light section on the right end of the egg is the air sac.
The other possibly dead in shell. Its a real pity about this one if it’s dead, as you can just make out the chick inside. It’s head is in the bottom left corner of the egg with its beak pointing downwards.
Tomorrow is the last day to turn the eggs before leaving them until they hatch, which should be Sunday or Monday. Hopefully the next ‘Chicken Update’ will include some photos from the hatch day.

Garden Comparison

Its been fairly rainy the last few days, so I have been looking through my photos I have been taking and was gobsmacked at how far my garden beds had really come!

The first two photos are comparisons of my current two beds. The top photos were taken at the start of this competition [Sept 5th] and the bottom photos were taken today [31st Oct], which is approximately 2 months apart.

The transformation is quite amazing! You don’t really notice the difference each day, as things change so slowly.

In other news, my spinach pot is doing awesomely, and we’ve had a few harvests off of it already. I have planted another lot of seeds in the green house so I can continue cropping the spinach for a much longer period of time.

And more of my corn as come up!! WOOHOO! Finally some decent sucess with corn. I am seriously so happy. Both me and my partner love corn, and it was the one veggie we definitely wanted to grow. Typically it is the one thing I have had the most trouble with growing!

13 Day Candling

Only 8 days to go!!

I did my second candling of the eggs in my incubator and also did my first chuck out of dud eggs. I threw out 5 infertile eggs and 3 eggs with blood rings.

What I am currently left with is 16 viable and well developing eggs. I have 5 Gold Laced, 4 Silver Laced [show quality] and 7 Silver Laced eggs all developing nicely.

As I candled them, I could actually SEE the chicks inside moving around!! I will try to video the next candling [which will take place on day 18, which is the 4th of Nov] so people can see the chickens moving.

Compared to last candling, the eggs are so much darker.