Farmer Friday

Eggs from the compost chickens

The compost chickens are doing well and give me a few eggs a day; lots of these are going into the incubator because they are all older girls and still laying.

cardboard and manure mulch

I planted out some rosemary, oregano and a Lady Banks rose by the chicken pens. They were mulched with cardboard and newspaper covered with manure.

helpers!

I've had some helpers lately and certainly appreciate them!

The Silkie babies got a new house

The plum trees are blooming

It has been way too warm here, with trees and flowers blooming as much as a month early.

eggs for the incubator

Time to hatch chicks! Lots of eggs going into the incubator, duck, Ameraucana, Buff Orpington, Black Copper Marans, olive eggers.

Superior Farmer's Market

Tomorrow I'll be back at the Superior Farmer's Market with baby mustard greens, kale, collards, Superior grown grapefruit and lots of fresh eggs!

A peak at the light set up at my house:

And soon I'll have lettuce for market!

More chickies on the way!

Hatching Eggs

OOPS! boy I didn't realize it's been a couple of weeks! Life has been a bit crazy and time is just flying by! I can't figure out where Aug & Sep went, let alone what happened to Oct!

Well my first incubator hatch came off so successful that I decided to do some more eggs. I bought some that were shipped to me. Shipping lowers the hatch rate because the eggs tend to get scrambled by the PO, even when marked FRAGILE.  The pale green eggs were in a box, marked fragile and one corner of the box was crushed in. The eggs were well packed, each egg individually wrapped in bubble wrap, placed in a smaller box in the center of the big box with more packing between the two boxes. Even so the egg closest to the crushed corner was cracked. The orange blob is some crayon was I melted over the crack to help keep out bacteria, just in case the egg actually was able to grow. Those pale green eggs are from chickens called Easter Eggers, which is not a standardized breed of chicken, but crosses between Ameraucauna and other breeds. Also, Amercauna chickens that are not up to the Standard of Perfection and cannot be shown, are also referred to as Easter Eggers or EEs, even if they are purebred. (confused yet?)

Those dark brown eggs are from French Black Copper Marans, a breed that comes from Marans, France. The darkest of the eggs in this pic are the lightest allowed in the breed and I have seen pictures of some that were so dark they were pushing towards black. 

The 7 light brown eggs are from my banty hens and my big Buff Orpington rooster.  I put all these eggs in the incubator on Oct 25. Today is Day 9. I finally got a really bright LED flashlight to use for candling the eggs. Candling is where you shine a light through the egg so you can see what is going on inside of it. I am still learning to candle, so unless I am really sure the egg is a dud I leave it in the incubator. I'm afraid I will toss one that was actually still good in my inexperience.

scrambled egg

This one was definitely scrambled, that blood ring goes all the way around the egg, pulled 4 EE and 2 Marans that looked like this.

chick embryo

Excuse the fuzzy photos. The camera shutter takes forever because I'm doing this in a very dark room and the fuzzys come from breathing while the shutter is open. Maybe next time I will try to pull out the tripod.

See that red dot in the middle of this one? that's  the head of the embryo, the fainter squiggle below it is it's body. You can also see the network of veins that draw nutrients from the egg yolk to feed the developing chick. This little guy was jumping and swimming all over the place.

Most of the Marans eggs are too dark to candle, but at least one showed definite signs of life. Some of the EEs were also lively and all seven of the banty eggs were jumping for joy!

The eggs are due to hatch November 15. So yea, think we'll end up with chicks in the living room all winter....

EGGCITING NEWS!

I came home this afternoon to find some of the eggs had pipped (made a little hole in the shell) and lots of pecking and peeping going on in the incubator.  And just a couple hours ago the first chick burst out of it's shell.

Now you are not supposed to open the incubator during the hatch but this little guy was lurching around all over, knocking the eggs around so after he was partly dry I whisked him out to my brooder set up to finish drying off.

Just now chick #2 popped out. This is so exciting, I can see how this could become addicting! No word from the Welsummer eggs yet, both of these little guys are from my bantys.

Holding my Breath

Well for almost 3 weeks now I've been keeping a secret. I've got some chicken eggs in an incubator. I've probably done some things wrong (OK I know I have!). For instance I forgot to turn the eggs while I was saving them up before setting them to hatch. The incubator I've borrowed didn't have it's wire shelf or humidity trays in it and then my friend went on vacation. I wanted to get the Welsummer eggs set before they got too old so I jury rigged a piece of screen to fit and put in some foam meat trays to hold water for the humidity. I have faithfully turned the eggs over every morning and night, so the embryos don't stick to the shells. I don't have an egg candler so used my old flashlight. It's a bit dim and I couldn't see into those Welsummer eggs with their darker shells. But I also set some banty eggs which are lighter and I could see that at least some of them are viable.

Today is what they call "lockdown". It means you fill up the water pans to raise the humidity, you stop turning the eggs and you aren't supposed to open the incubator until the hatch is finished. They are supposed to hatch on Saturday, so we shall see what happens. I should be able to hear some peeping maybe tomorrow night.

The Welsummer eggs are the larger darker ones, there are 7 of them. I don't really want any more bantys, but set 13 eggs because I had them and I was pretty sure they would be fertile and capable of hatching. (The Welsummer chickens are much older than my banty hens and I'm not sure of their fertility). I figured having both in the 'bator at once, if the Welsummer eggs don't hatch but the bantys do, then it's more likely the chickens and not something I did during incubation. I figure I can probably sell off the banty chicks and just keep the Welsummers. Holding my breath and crossing my fingers for a good hatch.

Now I gotta go find that heat lamp and get ready for the babies!