Turkey Eggs!

So, I've been checking the nesting box of the chicken tractor that the turkeys are in every few days. When I looked in this morning THERE WERE TWO TURKEY EGGS! One of my bantams and Lady have been laying for a week or two now but this is the first TURKEY egg! Heck, I think this is the first turkey egg I've ever SEEN! Anyway, SUPER excited (encase ya couldn't tell)! Soon it will warm up to the point where I can get the eggs before they freeze. Then I'mma incubate! I plan to have some hatching eggs for sale sometime soon and maybe some poults too! We'll see... For now you'll just haveta wait...in...extreme...anticipation...

Thanks for reading!
Y'all are awesome!

Seeya!

Chicks For Sale!!

Ok, guys big step.

I NOW HAVE CHICKS FOR SALE!!!!

MY FIRST (decent) HATCH EVER!!!!

I've tried to incubate lots but never seemed to have much success. Ever since I got my hovabator I've been hatching out chicks constantly. Here's a video of my first big hatch at one month and one week old. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Tx4uq0XU8

Seeya

Sold Most Of 'm

Yeah, all the big hens and Murdoc. Oh and the two bantam roosters (one of which was MacGyver the 2nd). I am going to try and get more into exotic breeding. I have silkies, bourbon red turkeys, coturnix quail, buff bantam cochins, black cochin bantams, and ... ... Hmm, I'm sure there's more. Nope! Wow, I really sold most of them. Other than the odds and ends of course but I'm just counting the ones that i have at least a pair of.

SOOOOOOOO, I'll have to do a recount and update the 'My Animals' page sometime. Until then you guys are in the dark. I do have lots though.

I have 35 eggs on lockdown and they should hatch tomorrow but we'll see how many hatch.

So, if anybody has any suggestions for what I should breed (fowl) I'll look into it and see if there's any on craigslist near me. ?????

Seeya

Lockdown!!

Y'all probably don't know what that is. Well, some of you might. On the the details!!

So when incubating eggs you have to turn them. Right? Right. and we do this because if we don't then the yolk will stick to the side of the egg and you will get deformed chicks. That is if they survive. BUT, if you keep turning them all the way until the end of incubation then the chicks, who are trying to get in the right position to hatch, get moved all around through the egg and have to keep on readjusting themselves. This can wear the chick out and it will not have enough strength to break out and is trapped inside the shell, alive. And so to prevent this we have to stop turning them on about day 18(yesterday).

Humidity. Humidity is just a measurement of how wet the air is. 100% is the max(The air can't hold any more) and 0% is the lowest(No water in the air). So, everybody has their own opinions on what the humidity should be at each of the different stages of incubation. However one thing that everybody seams to agree on is that the humidity needs to be between 50% and 80% for when they're hatching. So the reason for this is because if the humidity is too low than the egg will more or less dry out and the membrane will shrink wrap the chick and it will be stuck inside the shell, alive. However, if the humidity is too high then the chick will drowned inside the egg. So, regardless of what humidity you decide on for most of the incubation, at lockdown you need to have it about this humidity.

Another thing that you need to do for lockdown is to, well, 'lock down'. Don't open the incubator for any reason at all. Because if a chick is just starting to pip(The first step to hatching) it is used to 99.7 degrees and if you open the lid all the heat escapes and it takes a while to warm back up and the chick may die from shock because of the change of temperature. So you need to leave the lid on.

Next you want to put paper towels inside the incubator all over the floor so that when the chicks hatch they don't have their feet going through the wires and/or(Depending on your incubator) so that they can have the traction that they need to move around and warm up.

So, I made all of these changes yesterday, Sunday, the 18th day of incubation. So they should be hatching on Wednesday but that depends on the incubation temperature. If the temp is slightly low then it might be another day but if it's a little high than it could be earlier. My temp throughout incubation has been just under the recommended 99.7 so they might be a little late.

So, I'l definitely do a picture post when they hatch which should be later this week. All of this information is just from what I have learned off of the internet in the past month of research. So, if anybody has any tips, tricks, or ideas please let me know in the comments.

Thanks for checkin' out my blog,

Seeya

New Chick Pictures

I have tried hatching twice before. Once 1 out of 40 hatched. The second time 1 out of 17 hatched.

This time two did.

Talk about a better hatch rate!!

And I have one more that will hatch soon (or never :/) and two more that aren't due to hatch for a while yet.

Anyway, here's the pics...

Just starting to pip

getting bigger

starting to zip

most of the way around

almost ready

Jail break!!!!

Whew!! takin a nap

into a box

 At this point I wasn't sure how to arrange the light so that they could get away from it if need be but Laura, my sister, helped and got it all set up for me.

If I got a box too big it might get lost and/or not be able to find the light, food, or water.
Too small and the light would warm up the whole thing unless I put it super close and risked burning the box.
After explaining all this to Laura she just kinda set it up in the chicks always seem comfortable.
Very helpful! :)

The second one took all day to hatch

Whats that little gooey ball sprawled out in MY space!!!

Next morning. Oh it's a chicken just like me!!

Seeya

The Eggs are In the Incubator!!

This being my first time if anyone has any comments or suggestions please comment as I don't want to mess this up.

So there's 19 of them and they were put in at 8:30 on June first (2016 in case you didn't know.)

Anyway, 21 days from now I hope for lots of chicks.

We'll see.

Seeya

My New Incubator

The outside temp ranged from 77 to 61
And the incubator temp ranged from 100.6 to 95.3 (Which is way too much variation)

So I'm going to bring it inside so that the temp outside the incubator will stay kinda the same so that the incubator will not have much trouble keeping it the same temp.

Anyway, I'll keep experimenting with it to get it to stay the same temperature.

Thanks for reading my blog y'all

Seeya