When I moved in (4 years ago) my friend Linda sent her son Chris up to for a month to built me a cat run on the side of my house (I bred pedigree cats and the run was for breeding cats that were not allowed free roam) and some fencing etc.
Well a neigbour rang the planning office and the short story is I had to (as in Chris had to come back and) take it down! So we used some of (the rest of the panels r in storage until I can think of a use for them) it to make a 25' x 15' studed run inside my triple garage. Which I used for my stud boys for a couple of years and since as my chick rearing area! It has a double eley socket and is "rat prove" and cat prove. All my cats are neutered now and love their free roam lifestyle, mostly Big Norwegian Forest cats some 10kgs, they catch and eat whole rabbits, they ate all the wood pigeons, killed (but didn't eat) about 20 rats when I first moved in (no rats left now) basically they are a poultry keeper/gardners dream. But I digress
I have 3 incubators 2 auto-turn (1x24(dads) 1x48 (bought from P&T poultry) egg size) they take about 30/60 bantam eggs each and a large plastic (60 egg also bought from P&T) none turn which I use a hacher. I load eggs in weekly batches, a very experienced poultry man told me you can keep eggs at least 3 weeks (without reducing hatching rates) b4 loading (dark cuboard, cardboard tray top and bottom then filp once a day) the books say not & that the eggs are best kept point down. Anyway I've never had to try it.
I keep a note book next to the incubators because 20+ years of shift work have destroyed my memory. I pencil the breed/colour initals on the top of the egg and the date on each egg when I collect them, store them in plastic trays in a kichen cuboard filling online/telephone orders in poly-boxs, I stop at a post office at 08.30 on my way home from night shift to post the eggs and have good hatch rates reported. Poly boxes sometimes get a bad name but as long as you start with clean eggs(lots of fresh shavings in nest boxes), the right size is used, some kichen/toilet roll is placed around each egg and they are not reused if dirty or exposed to extremes of temperature their fine. Sense that used to be common!
I place the eggs into the incubator, I try not to mix large fowl and bantam eggs together in the same incubator at the same time. I top up the water up if/when I'm there doing something else but i don't worry about the humidity levels at all (in my experience it makes little difference with chicken eggs where I life) I candle on about day 6-8 and remove any clears, occasionally I recandle on day 14ist espically if a egg clearly started off but had ?died/stopped on 1st candle but I wasn't 100%, I pencil a largeX on those eggs and they are always duds when I check them later but I havent got the courage YET just to clear them a 1st candle. If i didn't 2nd candle a day 14 I always do them on day 19 when they are transfered to the hatcher which has a large water capacity under the grate that the eggs sit on, very important because you need high humidity so they don't stick to the shell at piping but they will dround in the shallowest of shallow water!
Now the HARD part do not open the hatcher at all EVER (this makes a huge difference to the amount that hatch and the amount that die in their shells), I have a temp/humidy meter on top with its probe doing though the tiny view whole, the reservoir is big enought to last without a top up! I wish I had bought a clear hatcher but I bought a red plastic one not knowing what i didn't know until it was too late, the auto turn incubators of course have clear plastic lids which do not need to because you can open them whenever you like (during the 1st 19 days & within reason of course).
Chicks are quite happy in there for 24+ hours after hatching, if you able to have drowed-proof chick drinking water in there, then 48+ hours. A saucer with pepples works well for me but they will drown if given the slightest chance at all, when they hatch they are drawn to the water like crasied fish on the bank of a pond.
I can tell by listening though the lid if they are piping/hatching or hatched, so about 48 hours after first hatch I go out with a jug of hot water, the brood box ready, open the hatcher scoop out all dry chicks/top up drink saucer (not too much) pour the rest of the jug to refill the base reservoir and put the lid back on (in as few seconds as possible) then carefully settle the dry chicks in the brood box, giving each one a couple of beak dips in their water (a normal thin liped plastic chick water dome). Now why the rush you might ask espically as I'm so laid back and pragmatic, its been my experince that drops in temp but I think more humidy during the hatching stage causes death! So I only open it when I do because I have to take the early hatched chicks out before they would die but it means that some of the ones just about to hatch now wont! They don't all hatch at the same time on day 21 as they are laid by different birds maybe differnet breeds. I leave any just hatched because they are not dry and fuffly and need to stay in the incubator/hatcher then I take out the 48 hours later, get rid of any unhatched eggs at which time I unplug and really clean it hard/disinfect, and set it doing agian for 24 hours b4 checking and transfering the next batch of 19 day eggs. The two auto hatch incubators run for several months, I only clean/disinfect them when turning them off for the off-season and give them another disinfect again before I start them off again in February.
AH, I had my first blog related email!
ReplyDeleteThey said maybe the chicks would have drowned less If I had took them out of the hatcher sooner!
I can see why they might think that from what I've posted above but what I didn't say was since I started doing it the way I state above I haven't lost one hatched chick to drowning.
When I first started hatching eggs I only had my dads clear topped (24) so I loaded it once, on day 18-19 turned off the auto turner, filled up the water, blocked up the space either side if the plastic floor and placed 1 of several different tiny drinking-water dishes such as a very small egg cup, a cooking spoon holder etc. I was new to it and super keen so I would watch hatching often though the clear lid. One minute there might 2 or 3 chicks just starting to come all the way out of the shells 2 minutes later 1 was dead in the shallow shallow water only 2or3mm deep. Or maybe they had been hatched for hours then suddenly 1 was drowned I tried many different ways of giving them drinking water before finally trying the pebbles, that way the water can be over a 1cm deep (so it doesn't just evaporate) but there is nowhere big enough for the chick to drown itself!
I am always quick to take advice from anyone who might know more than me and try different methods before finding what works for me but still always expecting that others will know lots that I dont, I like to think I'd always be the first to say "There is not always just one right way" but I left myself down here in those early days of hatching, I thought because I'd kept birds for many years & I've a read a couple of libary book on hatching that I had it all sewn up! I had to lose 4 or 5 chicks in their drinking water over 3 hatches before thinking to do a google search (I do several searchs everyday)and finding that pebbles was what almost all chicken hatchers seemed to use.