Candling Update

I candled the eggs again last night. This time I had read up and knew what I was looking for. I could see much better this time, even on the darker shells. I think that there was only one dark thick shell that I could not decipher anything about. 

I got a big surprise.... eighteen eggs have growing chicks inside! I was pretty impressed. For my first hatching that is a great rate. There is a chance that I some could be "quitters". That means they stop growing and die. I hope that they all make it! I have at least one of every variety still going! I am so excited.

It really is amazing to get a view into an egg. To see a tiny being moving around and knowing that it had grown so much in just a few days time is a miracle. God made some truly unfathomable things and I am blessed to witness these little ones. You can see a space of air on one end of the egg, the chick, amniotic sac, and yolk in the middle, and a bit of fluid on the other end. So cool! The baby chick absorbs the yolk before hatching. This gives it the nutrients that it needs to break out of its shell and to survive for the next two days. Amazing! Today my chicks can hear, have eyelids and are growing feathers!

I can check them one more time before they hatch. Maybe this weekend. Then the countdown begins! I actually dreamed about eggs last night and candling them. It is amazing to sit there and witness life in the making. I guess they are getting to me.

Stay tuned! More is happening every day! 

Egg Candling

Sunday night I tried my hand at egg candling. This allows you to tell if the embryos are developing. Here is a website that gives some information on the process. Here are pictures on the same site, backyardchickens.com. It is a bit tricky, especially with the dark shelled eggs. I used an LED head lamp held with my hand cupped around it and sat the egg on top of my hand. The white shelled eggs were easy to read. The almond eggs were ok. The dark and speckled ones, I have no idea about! If I am correct, around 25% of my eggs are developing. That would be about 10 eggs. It is a bit disappointing, but a bit of a relief too. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with 40 chicks if they all hatched! 

I am going to try to candle the eggs again later in the week, somewhere around day 10 of development. Hopefully I will know what I am looking for and be able to tell more on the dark shelled eggs. They should be a little more developed too. It is neat to see a tiny embryo moving! 

I am also trying to get the incubator settled in after placing the automatic egg turner in it. The temp reading are varying. The egg turner is a relief! I am not quite as stressed out over the eggs. 

This is all exciting and definitely a learning experience. Oh, I also learned that the egg and sperm are combined in the egg before incubation. It just kind of sits there and waits until the hen sits on the eggs to start development. Eggs are pretty amazing!

Stay tuned! I'll do my best to keep you updated.

The Incubator

Here is the incubator that I am using. It is a Hova-Bator. This model is fairly old. The newer ones look kind of like space capsules and most have a bigger viewing window.

I forgot to take a picture of the eggs before I put in the automatic turner. So here are the eggs in the automatic turner inside of the incubator. I love all of the colors! To the side is my hygrometer. The egg turner makes a full rotation in four hours. It is quiet and slow. It was so strange to wake up this morning and not have to turn the eggs! I didn't know that I would miss that ritual so quickly!

The countdown is on! Only two weeks until baby chicks should be hatching! 

Making Our Chickens a Home: Part 1

This weekend Dave and I began the journey into making our chickens a home. We have a large yard, but over the years due to neglect and a lack of effort, about half of the yard had become an overgrown urban jungle. Today that changed.

Dave and I got ourselves pumped up and hit the ground running with pruners, machete and chain saw in hand. I can not believe that we tackled so much in so little time. I had avoided that side of the yard for years! Now it seems like our yard has magically doubled in size. 

Here is a before picture. I had already started cutting stuff down, though.

Here are the piles of cut down backyard jungle.

Everything cut down!

We still have to get a bobcat back here to get the roots out of the ground. 30 year old root balls are not easy to dig up and there are many of them! I wish that we could just Roundup them away. A few things are going to stay, like azaleas. I just gave them a hard pruning. They should grow back lovely and easy to maintain. They will miss next years bloom, but it is worth it! We are also keeping the oakleaf hydrangea and some flowering quince. 

After bobcatting the place up, we will get a load of mulch to spread out over most of the area. We are going to plant grass in one small area. We also have to pick a new site for out Japanese Maple. That is a hard one. I think we might try to plant some blueberry bushes and an apple tree too, but I am thinking too far ahead. The chicken coop comes first! I will post pictures of our progression and keep you all up to date! Thanks for reading and anticipating our chicken home.

Incubation...

I am learning a lot about my eggs! First, I don't mind turning them. I thought that I would, but it makes me check on them. I am borrowing an automatic egg turner for the rest of the incubation. It will definitely make things easier. Think of it! Three turns a day, times forty eggs, times 18 days. That is a lot of turns! The automatic egg turner turns them more frequently. Also, it takes 21 days to hatch but you don't turn them the last 3 days. 

I have had a problem getting my temperatures right too. The incubator is supposed to be 99 degrees. It seemed to be hovering around 97 on my standard thermometers. Then I got a hygrometer. It measures humidity and temperature. Humidity is important during incubation and hatching. The hygrometer measured temps at 95. I finally got them to go up to 97. Today I will try to raise it to 99, before I put the automatic egg turner in place. Whew! I have been stressing like a mother hen! I still have to get the humidity right. It is a little high. It should be 40-50% during incubation and 100% during hatch time. 

I have so much to learn! I will take some pictures of the incubator with and without the egg turner so that you get a good idea. I can't believe that it has almost been one week. The time is flying. I will have baby chicks in no time!

Stay tuned....

Back to Baking

I have meaning to bake bread for a few days now. I broke down this weekend and bought a loaf. 

But tonight I baked my best looking loaf of bread yet! 

I used a potato bread recipe from Cooking Light. This is the second time I that I have made it. Both times it was easy. I thought that I messed it up this time. Nope. Look at this loaf! Dave thought it was great to put a ruler in front of it. He was pretty impressed with my bread.

Here is the money shot. Is your mouth watering?

The recipe makes a loaf of bread and a pan of rolls. We ate some of the rolls with dinner. I am going to try freezing the rest of the rolls and see how they do. I'll let you know. 

This is one recipe that you have to try!

Question?

Does any one know of a group that helps save plants from houses that are being demolished or landscapes being ripped out? I would love for my plants to go to loving homes, but we have to rip them out. They are over grown. 

Let me know if you can think of anyone. I am trying to search for some myself. Anyone know of any Master Gardeners? They are usually into that kind of thing too. 

All of this for my chicken coop. I can't wait! I will keep you posted. I am turning the eggs 3 times a day. That is 120 turns every day. Hopefully I will get an automatic turner soon.

Thanks for reading!

This really happened by accident...

On my chicken adventure, I truly thought that I would get some day old chicks to get my small flock started. They are so cute and fluffy! I pictured opening the box when they arrived and them chirping out, " Are you my Mother?" just like in the Dr. Seuss book.

My plans changed quickly on Friday. A teacher at school had borrowed a small incubator to hatch some eggs in her classroom. She asked me to help and we anxiously awaited our shipment of eggs. They finally arrived at lunch time and when we opened the box there were 4 eggs instead of 3. Oh no! Our classroom incubator only holds 3 eggs! What would we do with a 4th egg? I quickly decided that I would try to incubate it. 

First I hatched a plan for a basic incubator consisting of a light bulb and a box. Driving home from work with my little egg in the seat next to me, I remembered that my uncle had an incubator. He had just hatched ducklings. Whew. Now I knew that I had an incubator, but was it worth it to hatch just one egg? I contacted Little Gem Hatchery. I had been in contact with them about picking up some day old chicks. They are just a 40 minute drive away. I decided to see if they had any hatching eggs. 

I got a response back very quickly! Ginny and Lee told me that they had a lot of hatching eggs ready and waiting. Could I pick them up on Sunday? Woohoo!!! I was all set. I followed the instructions that they gave me for my one lonely egg and waited anxiously. Sunday morning Dave and I drove out to the hatchery. We saw all kinds of chickens and roosters, guineas, ducks, geese and a turkey! Ginny had already filled up two egg cartons for us filled with different kind of eggs. After our tour and some advice, I paid for our eggs and headed home.

Here is what we got!
 

I really wanted to hatch Cuckoo Marans. They are pretty birds and lay pretty eggs. Yes, I judge a chicken by it's looks and eggs. Actually, I was looking for 3 things when I was looking at chicks and it applies to getting hatching eggs, too. First was what a chicken looks like. Like any pet, you want to enjoy looking at it every day. There are so many varieties! I looked for hours online. The second factor was egg production and looks. I want a decent amount of eggs and pretty eggs. I love speckled eggs, brown eggs, almond eggs. Ok, I love any eggs. The third thing I looked for was the chicken's disposition. I wanted a docile chicken that did not tend to go broody. That means that she gets moody and wants to sit on her eggs all of the time. Little Gem Hatchery has chickens that fit my bill! 

Ok, our varieties and total.

3  Blue Laced Red Wyandotte

3  Blue Cuckoo Maran

3  Welsummer

6  Blue splash Maran

6  Lakenvelder

6  Golden Lakenvelder

12 Cuckoo Maran

1 Black Australorp(form the classroom shipment)

Whew! Let's look at them again.

After they go into the incubator it will take 21 days for them to hatch. That gives us an expected arrival date of May 24th. I have to turn them 3 times a day so that the embryos do not stick to their shells. We don't have a fancy automatic egg turner. The eggs are not viable until they are in the incubator. I mean, they aren't embryos until then, just egg and sperm hanging out separately. Interesting huh? I hope that all of the eggs hatch. If I do my job, we should have success. Some never develop and that can't be helped. This will be an adventure!

40 baby chicks! I will have to sell some to good homes and the hatchery said that they would take back any we can't handle or any roosters. You can't always distinguish a boy from a girl chick for 3-6 months. It depends on the variety of chicken. We only want girls so that they can lay eggs. You don't need a rooster to have eggs. 

I think I will start sharing some things that I learned from my class on here. What do you guys think? It was so informative! They really are not difficult to care for. They take work just like any pet. 

I will keep you all updated on the incubating process and on our coop building process.

Thinking about having chickens in your backyard? Maybe I can help! I am going to have some chicks soon and I know a really handy carpenter who can build your coop. =)

Chicks in the City

Last Saturday I spent the day taking a class on chickens. Yes. Chickens.It was at Oakhurst Community Gardens in Decatur taught by a great couple, Andy and Jen. Andy is the Chicken Whisperer. He has tons of links on his blog with good chicken information. Warning: It is addictive!

 The class was so great. It was really a crash course on keeping chickens in your backyard. I have been dreaming about this for a while now. Dave is on board and we have been trying to get our backyard ready to build a coop. We have a ways to go. I think we're gonna need a bobcat to rip out old growth though! We can do it! Anyone want to help?

Here are some pics from the coop tour. We got to go to local homes that keep chickens to see their coops, chickens and ask questions. I went with my friend Kristie. We rode our bikes all over Decatur to see these chicken homes. We felt like amazing women.

Here are a few chickens scratching through some hay and scraps.

Here is a pretty lady. I think that she is striking in her black and red ensemble! The ladies were enjoying the shade of this holly bush. And let me just tell you, it was a hot day! The hottest in quite a while!

This was my favorite coop, well both of ours really. The owner did a great job. He took the best options from different coops and put them together into this one. We are going to try to recreate this in our backyard. I know that Dave can do it. I am so glad that I have such a handy husband!

These are some pretty ladies feeding in another yard. I love the black and white look!

And last a such a pretty buff chicken.

I am hooked. I can't wait to have chickens. They are so cute, are great pets and they give you something back. Yes, the Sutton farm may open it's gates sooner than we ever imagined. Naw, we are just making good use of the space we have. Chickens seem like the next step to being more self sufficient. And they are so darn adorable! More chicken talk to come!!!