11 Babies

A couple of months ago, I got the idea to try and raise chickens. I want to do a few things to try and develop a more sustainable way of life. I'm not saying that I want to raise all of our own food and go without electricity or anything like that, but it does seem smart to develop a few skills so that if anything did happen, we wouldn't all starve to death. I'm going to raise a garden this year, and we are going to try and keep chickens, both for eggs and to slaughter for meat. I did a lot of research, and decided that I wanted a certain breed--black australorps. They are cold hardy, good layers, but also good meat animals.

There are a few different ways to start your own flock, but I decided to incubate our own eggs. I bought fertile eggs off of e-bay, believe it or not. Incubating is a very finicky process--the eggs have to be kept at a reasonably steady temperature (roughly 99.5 degrees F), turned at least 3 times a day, and have a descent amount of humidity. Because we didn't want to spend over $100 on an incubator, Dusty built one. However, our incubator doesn't have a built in thermostat, so we had to adjust the temperature several times a day. We weren't able to keep it constant throughout, so we aimed for between 99 and 101 degrees. Humidity was also a problem. We had a cup of water in there to try and keep things moist, but it was insufficient, so I took to spraying the eggs with water every time I turned them, but this lowered the temperature so we had to be careful about that, too. I also decided to turn the eggs five times a day instead of three, because from what I read, the more the better. There are automatic egg turners, but again, more money than we wanted to spend. We tried candling the eggs a few times to see if any chickens were growing but we could never really figure out what we were seeing.

When we reached hatching day (all chicken eggs hatch within 21-22 days of beginning incubation), Dusty and I had very little hope of any of the eggs hatching. Under the best of circumstances, only 60% of the eggs will hatch, and we had had so much temperature variation, that we didn't think that it would work. Lo and behold, only one egg started to hatch. It took him several hours to hatch, and I stayed up until midnight waiting for him to get out of there. The next morning there was one more, and then later three more, until finally eleven of the chicks hatched! It was more than we'd ever dreamed of! There was one poor little guy who, a full day after all of the other eggs had hatched, started trying to get out, but he didn't make it very far. Dusty tried opening the egg (without much hope) and he did die. However, every single one of our other chicks survived. Only three eggs didn't hatch at all.

The chicks are now living in a "brooder box" in our basement until they are old enough to move outside or be slaughtered, about 8-10 weeks. Now, they are only a week old, but they are growing their "grown-up" feathers on the tips of their wings. I guess I may come to regret this whole enterprise, but, while it has been stressful at times (worrying about whether or not they will hatch, etc.) so far it has been quite rewarding. Tomorrow I am going to take one of the chicks to Petra's school for show and tell while they are still cute.

PS-I apologise for the lack of proper paragraphs. I know that this makes long selections harder to read. I tried several times to insert breaks, but blogger wouldn't let me, so it's not my fault.