Friday, April 20, 2012

Introducing....drum roll please....
Amelia's first blog!  (Written by Amelia's mom and dad, mostly)

We want two more chickens, so....we borrowed Amelia's friend's Rooster, "Ricky Glisten", from their farm.  We picked him up in a cardboard box, and brought him home.  He was such a gentleman, and the hens really liked him, we think.  However, we did not see any mating going on, so after three days of 5 am cockle-doodle-doo, we took him back to his farm.  Apparently, he immediately mated with his hens!

Wednesday, we were making a carrot cake and discovered that our eggs were fertile.  They had a little donut shaped white dot on the yolk.  We looked at photos online, and confirmed the fertility.

Our hen, Millie, has broody tendencies, but it does not seem like she really wants to sit on the eggs.  We really want to hatch these eggs, and after looking for an incubator to rent or borrow, and having no luck, we bought one from Urban Farm Store for $119 (they were really nice and gave us a discount)

Apparently, you need one with water trays, to keep the air humid.  A circulating fan is also essential, to keep the air temperature consistent throughout. An automatic egg turner would be handy, but we opted to save the $50 and turn them ourselves.  You are supposed to turn them three times a day, and you mark an X on one side of the egg, and an O on the other side.

We plugged it in at 9am, filled the water tray, and turned the thermostat on fully. We reached temperature immediately.  Now, we are micro-adjusting the temperature to stay exactly at 99.5.  The instructions recommend waiting 6 hours prior to placing the eggs inside.

3 comments:

  1. 1st to comment! Yay- I love this Amelia! I'm so proud of you for doing this- super cool! I will be reading along and I shared your blog on mine- so you have to get writing!

    xxxx Auntie Lindsay

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  2. Aww..she's a proud mama already. Can't wait to read all about the adventure. Ps ricky glisten is the best name ever. Julie and mirabelle

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  3. Awesome job you guys are doing,Amelia! HAve fun and enjoy learning all about this adventure,my young friend,and welcome (Mom and Dad also ;) :p) to blogging :)

    The DC (Steve)

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