Monday Jan 07, 2008
Late last week and over the weekend we had 9 chicken eggs hatch
in our incubator. We started out with 20 or 22 (don't
remember), discarded some earlier as they weren't developing or
had stopped developing, and were left with about 15 eggs we
hoped would hatch. Getting 9 is pretty good, as Karen knows
folks who've tried hatching multiple times and gotten no chicks
at all.
We have
Buff Orpington sounds like some sort of macho guy to me, but
Buff Silkie sounds like an oxymoron, as we think of
buff as well built and silkie
as kind of prissy looking. But in this case, of course,
buff refers to the color, a light blondish color.
Sam and Karen took care of turning the eggs three times a day
and candling them to see if they were developing. My only
involvement with the incubation was to help wire up the
incubator. I wired up a light bulb to a hot water heater
thermostat, and Karen used a thermometer to help set the
termperature. I also wired up a computer fan from an old
computer we still have around to an A/C adapter. Funny thing
about that, the best place on the web to find instructions on
wiring a computer fan to an A/C adapter was a web site dedicated
to growing pot! :)
The nine little chicks seem to be doing well, and they act like
chickens right out of the box. They test new things by pecking
at them, so every new chick that was born was pecked by the
others first :). We moved them to a brooder box with pine
shavings, they had to peck at the pine shavings to determine
whether it was something to eat. We saw one poor chick got one
of her toes grabbed by another who thought it might be something
to eat!
Monday Jun 25, 2007
We now have three of our four hens laying eggs. Shiner's eggs
continue to be the largest, and they're a medium reddish brown
color. Eggo started laying a couple of weeks back, smaller blue
green eggs. And just last week Chick started laying light brown
pullet eggs. So we've got loads of eggs to eat and give away.
Monday Jun 04, 2007
Previously I talked about the four hens who live in our back
yard. The oldest hen, Shiner Bock, has been giving us eggs for
a few weeks now. We're expecting the other hens to start laying
soon, so we check the nest boxes a few times every day.
Yesterday, I opened the lid of the two nest boxes, where we have
nesting material and some golf balls and a plastic hollow Easter
egg, so the hens get the idea that this is a good place to lay
eggs. Much to my surprise, I saw a snake with its jaws wrapped
around the plastic Easter egg. At first I thought one of my
boys was messing with me, as they have lots of rubber and
plastic snakes that they play with. As my wife Karen has said
many times, one of these days she's going to pick up what she
thinks is a rubber snake and have a nasty surprise. But anyway,
I saw the snake's tail wiggle a bit, so I quickly closed the lid
and called Karen over. Hey, they're her chickens, maybe she's
heard of some great method to get rid of snakes. And maybe I'm
a wimp :).
Karen opened the lid, and banged on the box a few times with a
board, and the snake eventually slithered out of the coop and
into the garden. He was about 3-4 feet long, and according to
our reptile book, he was probably a rat snake.
So now we have a couple things to think about. First, how many
other eggs has this snake gotten? Second, how to we keep him
out, other than hope he'll succeed in swallowing a plastic egg
or golf ball and die? We can also hope the chickens will catch
him in the coop or run and kill him, and get a good meal too!
Tuesday May 08, 2007
So, there's the old question Which came first, the chicken
or the egg? In our case, it was the chicken.
Okay, let me back up and explain. A few months back my wife
Karen decided she and my son Nick were going to raise hens for
eggs. She started with four chicks, of which three (Chick, Eggo
and Yoga) have survived to this day. A few weeks back, when
Nick and I were gone on a cub scout campout, Karen and Sam, my
other son, went out and bought a chick, Mrs. Shiner Bock, a few
weeks older than the others. Yesterday, Shiner presented us
with her first egg, a brown egg with little red flecks on it!
So, in our case, indeed, the chicken came before the egg.
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