Surprise surprise!!
For the last 3 weeks we’ve been doing something NEW!
incubating chicken eggs.
someone at my husband’s work gave him 6 fertilized eggs and said he could either cook them or incubate them.
So guess what we did?
We went the “cheap” route and got a Styrofoam cooler from walmart and a lightbulb and a thermometer that also measures humidity and had the 6 eggs in their carton and turned them at least twice a day for 18 days and also kept a wet sponge in there to add humidity
Then on day 18 I took them out and laid them on the bottom
They were supposed to hatch at day 21, but nothing happened!
Then day 22 or maybe even 23 we saw a small crack on one egg, so I switched out the sponge with a bowl of water instead (I switched back to the sponge later)
Yesterday we went to church and on the way home we had a bet about what the progress would be, Bjorn guessed that the chick was hatched and a second one started!
He was right!
This is Star Shade (Sonja named it)
Then in the afternoon #2 hatched, hard to see but it’s yellow
Solveig named it Popcorn!
no news on the other 4 eggs, but we’ll keep the chicks and eggs in there, and today we’ll get a brooder set up (we waiting to see IF anything would actually happen before buying more stuff! we’re new at this and didn’t know if we “fried” or froze them or they were duds!)
I’ll keep you posted on more.
I’m writing this Sunday night.
We have friends with chickens that our daughter house sat for so the last day she was there (last year in Septemberish) we kept the eggs she collected to hatch. out of 18 eggs we got 4 hens and 6 roosters. 🙂 The hens just started laying about 3 weeks ago! We are still trying to think of a solution on our rooster front since our daughter won't let us eat them and there are way to many of them out there right now. We got 5 more pullets from the feed store a couple of weeks ago so they should start laying in about 5 or 6 months. We are having a great time backyard chicken raising! I call our coop the "chicken mansion" though because the spouse went a little crazy when he built it. LOL! Have fun and enjoy them!
I remember my boys brings baby ducks home one year. They were so stinkin cute, but man do they poop! LOL!! Good luck on your chickens. Hope to see 4 more soon.
Popcorn and Star Shade – I just love the names kids pick out!I raised chickens years ago and enjoyed every minute of it, even cleaning out the coop. Raising these cuties will give your kids such great memories in the future. Have fun with it!
Oh, such a great experience for the children, they're remember this for the rest of their lives and tell their children about it. I grew up in the country amid farms and I realize now that it was special, few of my friends had that experience.Kind of a good thing for me and my faulty memory, I can tell stories and even if I get something wrong they don't know!
the children are so lucky to have watched these chicks hatch hopefully the other eggs will come to life too. Love hearing chickens cluck happily have fun with them