Shawn Foster

Put in an order this morning for 6 Rhode Island Red and 6 Black Australorps. Brings me to a total of:
- 2 hatch batches (timed for 21 days apart)
- 4 breeds
- 24 eggs

First batch won’t ship until March 25th. Am I anxiously awaiting this? Oh my yes. Counting down the days as I dither over brooder options.

Does anyone know of a source for goose eggs? I’m hoping for one as a guard for the chickens, but the day-old hatchlings are outrageously expensive.

E Sager wrote:Congrats on starting your chicken journey! One issue we ran into when we hatched out our own is leg splaying when the chickens break out of the shell. We found some of that kitchen drawer liner material on the bottom of the incubator helps a lot. After that, just watch out for pasty butt and you'll be good to go.

Excellent tip, thank you! This is all a brand new world for me.

Carla Burke wrote:Hi, Shawn! Our incubator success rate, albeit with quail, rather than chickens, sucked. I can't help thinking it was either the cheapo incubator or human error, but, we gave up, and when we need to replace dwindling birds, we order day-old ones. The last two years, we lost every single duck and chicken egg to predators (snakes, chipmunks, & even chickens), mostly before they even hatched. So, in July, I ordered Buff Orps. Our best successes in egg production have been from those, Barred Rock, & Black Austrolorps. Our worst egg-eating chickens have been Golden Comets.

Oh, I’m so sorry, Carla! What a nightmare!

I’m considering Black Austrolorps and Rhode Island Reds for the second hatching; they seem to fit in with my overall goals. More diversity means I get an opportunity to see which breeds are a good fit for us and our situation. How have the Buff Orpingtons worked out for you?

That gives me a general ballpark of between 40 and 80 percent. I can live with that. 😁 Just put in an order for 6 Buff Orpingtons and 6 Barred Rocks for the end of March, and I’m trying to decide on which breeds for the second batch for 21 days later. Ridiculously excited about having these tiny velociraptors on my little farm!

Matt McSpadden wrote:Hi Shawn,
That is very exciting. I had to get rid of my chickens about 3.5 years ago... and I'm waiting until I'm in a position to get them again. You give me hope :)

I am not an expert on hatching by any means, but I have done it several times with an incubator. Always with the cheap ones... I didn't have any fancy egg turners or digital anything. The incubator will come with instructions on how to keep the temp and humidity at the right levels. This is probably the most important. I VERY much agree with hatching more than you think you need, as some will probably not hatch.

I typically mark the eggs on either side with an x and o... or maybe a 1 and a 2. Just something to tell which side is which. Many online sources will say to turn them 3 to 6 times a day and also make sure you turn them left and then right and alternate... and all sorts of things. We never did those things, but it might make it better? We would turn them twice a day and didn't pay attention to which direction or anything like that. Don't turn them for the last 3 days. Let the chicks dry off completely in the incubator before moving them to the brooder. If it is late, and you leave them overnight, this should be fine. Remember that chicks can survive for a couple days with no food or water when they are first born... which is how the mail order chicks do it.

Everything after that is the same with mail order chicks as with chicks you hatched... so from what you have said, you have lots of info for the brooding and onward.  

Thanks, Matt! The incubator has a turning function (as well as lockdown for the last three days), which I think will help. Marking them is a great idea to help make sure it’s working properly. When you were hatching, what was your general hatch rate? Is 50% a reasonable expectation?

Some of the hatcheries (McMurray and Cackle, for example) have fertilized eggs that they ship; I’m going to give that a try. I’m also keeping an eye on the bulletin board at the feed store and on Craigslist and FB Marketplace for local possibilities. I have a short list of breeds I’m looking for: Orpington (color immaterial), Plymouth Barred Rock, Rhode Island Red. They’re all heavy, dual-purpose breeds that have good egg production rates.

The incubator holds 12 eggs. Planning on two hatches; I figure with a conservative hatch rate of 50%, and a basic 50/50 sex ratio, this should get me about 6 layers, a rooster for future fertilized egg shenanigans, and some dinners!

My in-laws were just telling me yesterday about some of their experiences with this. They were told it’s illegal here to bury large livestock; the instruction is to drag the carcass out to the woods, which we have plenty of, and let nature take its course.

(I’ve since looked up the laws; while there are specific guidelines about locations for burials, they are not illegal. Whew.)  At any rate, when their horses died, they had an excavator dig very, very, very large holes and buried the horses there.

Welcome to Permies, Luke!

I have been wanting chickens for at least 20 years. We are finally in a place where we can do it, so I’ve been planning out how many, what housing, rotational pens, and all that jazz. My mother-in-law, who lives next door, is very excited for me to do this…to the point that she bought me an incubator for Christmas this year. I was planning on ordering chicks, but there is no way I’m going to disappoint her now. Hatching it is!

But while I’ve done lots of research here and in other places about how to raise and care for chickens, I skipped over the whole hatching part. My modus operandi when faced with something I don’t know about is to run and find a book, so I’ve got Gail Damerow’s Hatching and Brooding Your Own Chickens and I’m reading it furiously. What else should I know, friends? What other resources have been useful for you? Throw me a lifeline of books, articles, threads, videos!

Those are really fun! Would love to see other examples.