Hatch day!

Late Wednesday evening, one of our chicks began the hatching process and by Thursday morning several others followed.  Thursday was day 20 in the process and today, day 21, we've had several more hatch.  So far we have ten and another chick that's working on hatching.  That's from the first clutch of fourteen eggs.  If you remember, I started originally with 25 eggs but I took out eleven eggs that I presumed to be duds only to find upon cracking them open to investigate that three of them were alive and well...if only for a short while longer.  The second clutch that I put in the incubator to replace those should be hatching this same time next week.  There are eleven of them.  I've thought about getting another twenty or so going as soon as the incubator is available again.  If I have a 60 percent hatch rate and half of them are roosters than I could end up with 13 or 14 new hens.  That's about what we need to be able to eat as many eggs as we would like to.  The most eggs we ever ate in one week was NINE dozen.  That's back when I was pregnant with number five and the only thing I could eat was eggs.  Still, we eat a dozen per meal and would like to have them for breakfast just about every morning.  I don't get tired of eggs.

Right now, we have ten "hens a laying" ♫♪ and five up and coming layers that should start laying in the next month or so.  They're free range range so other than the up front expenses of a coop and the supplies needed for the chicks, they are free.  The goats are always eating the hens feed so we haven't feed them any for a while and they seem to be doing fine.  We get six or eight eggs a day and, so far, that hasn't gone down.

We'll soon be building a larger coop to house all these hens at night out of a metal grain bin that our incubator friend is giving us for free.  It's fourteen feet in diameter so it ought to be big enough for a good number of chickens.  I'd also like to start raising our own meat birds soon and in the name of keeping it simple, I imagine we'll house them all together.  We'll see though, hubs may get other ideas.

Now, I haven't read this recommendation anywhere, but I figure if I didn't interfere and let nature run it's course, these little chicks would be outside 24/7, so, we took them outside for a little while this morning when it was already in the nineties to meet the other animals and what did they do?  They all huddled up under oldest daughter who was squatting on the ground next to them.  Momma.  heh.

Here's what was going on this morning...chicks, chickens, goats, cats, kittens, dogs and kids (human variety.)  A few of the hens were curious about the chicks (a.k.a. THEIR children) and they acted afraid of them when we'd try to show a chick to them up close.  Silly chickens.

We just checked the incubator and we have two chicks hatched and another one just starting (and it's the BIG one ☺.)  That will make twelve.  Woohoo!

Oh, and just a note...There is at least one egg that I now know for sure from regular candling that's a dud and it's from the first clutch of eggs so it's been in the incubator for 21 days now and up to a week in a bowl on the kitchen counter prior to that and it has not exploded.  Myth?  I don't intend to keep it or any other duds longer than 25 days in the incubator so we'll see what happens.  It makes me think of when Templeton the rat took the gooses rotten egg off her hands, I mean wings, for her in Charlotte's Web.  P.U.