First Time DIY Incubating - Learning Experience #4,286

I decided a few months ago that it was time for me to learn how to incubate and hatch eggs. In my endeavor to learn everything chicken, this is clearly an incredibly important part. I'm feeling the pinch right now, so instead of investing in an incubator that I would only use once if I discovered I hated the process, I bought a book and hit the web for different kinds of DIY incubator options.

Styrofoam coolers seem to be a popular choice, but this time of year, I couldn't find any locally, so a small plastic tote from Home Depot would have to suffice. I followed the instructions in a youtube video declaring you can make an incubator for $20.00. I picked up a 25 Watt appliance bulb, an extension cord, a light socket that can be plugged into an extension cord, 2 cheap thermometers with a round humidity reading on each and some sealant. At home, I grabbed a square 8x8 baking dish, some hardware cloth and my dremel.

First, I used the dremel to carve a hole for putting the socket and used the sealant to make sure it was air tight and set in well. After letting it dry for a couple of hours, I put in the light bulb, placed the dish with the hardware cloth over it into the tote, taped each thermometer to each end with electrical tape (not ideal), cut a few holes near the top of the walls for ventilation and snapped the lid on to see where the temperature would land. Since this was a still-air incubator, I wanted it to be around 102 F inside.

To make a long story short (I didn't really, this is still long), it took me about a week to balance out the temperature. In the end, I used a medium box from Lowes and put the tote inside the box. I also managed to find a styrofoam cooler at Kroger and broke it into pieces. Then I inserted the pieces into the walls between the box and tote. I added a couple of towels as well and after a week, I had a fairly solid temperature ranging between 99-102 depending on opening it and such. I chose to let the humidity be as it was reading about 30%. Then I added a digital thermometer I had in my aquarium. It's aquatic so it has a wire with a little sensor at the end. I could tape it to the roof of the tote and let the sensor dangle right above the eggs, getting a reading right where the eggs are.

On the big day, I met Molly, from a local farm, and bought 10 eggs from her: 6 cochin and 4 cochin/ameraucauna mix. I put the eggs in 2 half egg cartons and put one of the lids torn off the egg carton between them in the incubator to tilt them both slightly. Then, to turn them, I would just exchange sides 3-4 times a day.

Day One: February 2, 2016 - I got the eggs at the end of the work day and went straight home with them and placed them in the incubator around 4:30pm EST. I turned them once that night, then the next morning started the routine of turning them right before I left for work - 7:20am, then when I got home - 4:30pm, and last time before I went to bed - 10:00pm.

Day Two and Three: February 3 & 4, 2016 - My furnace decides to give me trouble. The first day I come home and the temperature in the house was 60 degrees and the incubator was 93.5. It likely had been a slow decline all day. I got the temp back up that evening, but  it happened again the next day and it fell to around 95 degrees. This turned out to be a challenge that continued throughout the entire hatch. We bought a new thermostat and did some furnace maintenance and that seemed to help, but it was a constant battle. Sigh.

Day Seven: February 9, 2016 - I did my first full candle of all of the eggs this day. They were doing wonderfully. The olive was a little harder to candle than the brown eggs, but I managed and nine of them were fine, one had a blood ring. I broke open the blood ring egg and it looked like it hadn't developed at all really and I tossed it.  I placed the remaining nine back in the incubator and continued on.

Day 12: February 14, 2016 - I was anxious to see what was happening and I went ahead and candled again. Seven of them were perfect and two more had stopped developing. There were clear blood spots, so I went ahead and broke them open. It looked to be they stopped around day seven or eight. Hopefully my last candle didn't have anything to do with that one.

Day 10 - 17: February 12-19, 2016 - I decided that I was getting some maran eggs and I wanted to go ahead and start them in the incubator. But, the cochin eggs needed to go into lockdown. So I went with making a hatcher. This one I really didn't want to spend any money if I didn't have to, so I went outside to the garage and got a 10 gallon aquarium my husband and I weren't using for the moment. I cleaned it up as much as possible (fish are disgusting - haha) and brought it inside with the cheap little rickety hood I had bought for it a while back.

Now, in this one I needed to get the humidity up, so I put a dish in the bottom, with hardware cloth and a towel over it and a couple of wet towels around it. This was all a mistake. I am now not a big fan of the dish with hardware cloth under the eggs at all. And, interesting, regular towels seemed to keep the humidity out of the air and I didn't want that. So, I bought some cheap cleaning clothes from Kroger for $1.99 for four. I wrapped the tank in bubble wrap and two towels around the outside, with an opening for me to watch easily and set up a webcam.

I pulled the dish out from under the eggs and I put two glad containers with water and sponges in them on either side. Aquarium hoods also have a gap at the lid, so I placed a warm wet towel there as well, that I replaced a couple of times a day.

 Day 18: February 20, 2016 - I put the eggs in the new hatcher and closed everything up. I felt that as long as I kept the humidity around 60% or higher, I was good to go. I was wrong about that, BTW, needs to be higher than that.

In the end, four beautiful little babies hatched on Day 22, February 24, 2016. I got up that morning and three eggs had pipped, then by the time I got to work I watched the first one hatch through the webcam. My kids, my husband and the daughter of a friend of mine all watched that first egg from school and work and wherever we were. It was pretty marvelous. by the time I got home, a second one had hatched and a couple of hours later, two more hatched. I waited a couple more days and checked the remaining eggs. They had fully developed and were shrinkwrapped. This made me sad, but considering my complete ignorance, setup, and furnace issues, I'm going to still call the hatch a success. These four babies are gorgeous and I am thrilled I managed to bring them into the

world.

So, in the end, here's 10 things I learned:

1. Facebook groups are priceless for going to for advice and support. There are folks doing the same thing at the same time and worrying just as much as you are! There are a few interesting folks. For example, I had a person tell me I was "killing my babies" by candling at all, but in general, they're wonderful.

2. You absolutely can buy eggs off of eBay. I'm glad I focused on ones I could avoid having shipped, but I have now met another cool chicken person and had a fun learning experience with good eggs.

3. Temperature is key and needs to be balanced.Keeping the temperature in the house consistent plays an important role when you're doing a DIY setup. I'm unsure with a regular incubator, but I would doubt it's as much.

4. Humidity is incredibly important during lockdown. I didn't take that as seriously as I should have and I will next time. My goal next time is to keep it around 70%-75%.

The first hatch! A little lady I named Stevie

5. A webcam is easy, awesome, and I will have mine on soooo much. My coworkers and I all staring at baby chicks is the best thing. Make sure the audio is off though. Realizing other people could have heard some of the things I said to my husband last night was not ideal. Funny, but not ideal.

6.  Baby chicks flailing about right after hatch will break other eggs. One of the eggs that died had a crack that Stevie gave it when she was first hatched. I'm pretty sure that played a role in the demise of that chick. Unlike the other two remaining, it showed blood spots.

7. Don't use terrycloth towels when trying to raise humidity. I had someone on one of the groups tell me this and they were right. I noticed an immediate change when I switched them out. I used little cleaning rags and loved them.

8. Don't use a dish with hardware cloth on it, even though every youtube video making a DIY setup seems to recommend it, it takes up too much space. Keep it simple, just set the eggs on the bottom of the incubator/hatcher. As long as the hatcher has something the chicks won't slide on and hurt their legs and the incubator has something that tilts the eggs, you're good to go.

9. Educate yourself, but don't overthink it. It doesn't need to be super complex, just what works.

10. You can't make an incubator for $20, unless you already have supplies at home. It sounds like a great idea, but it's really not so simple as a cooler, light and thermometer. I used several towels to hold in heat, bubble wrap and the box. I had all these already, but I still needed quite a bit more than $20 could have covered if I needed to buy everything.

So, I hope this is helpful and enjoy. If you'd like to see some videos of the chicks hatching and such, check out my youtube channel. I also still have the livestream and will have it up intermittently so people can watch the chicks and the next hatch. My next post will be a chick update.

Happy chickening!

DIY Chicken Waterer - Super Easy

I've struggled a bit to find a chicken waterer that works well for my particular setup. The struggle became more real with freezing temperatures. I have no power to my coop or run and wasn't interested in starting now. What I needed was something that (1) I could easily add warm water to if it was frozen, (2) hung from a chain to from kicking yuck into it.

In my many google searches, I ran across this blog from three years ago onNatural Chicken Keeping: Comparison of Poultry Cup Drinkers. The information was so helpful and I liked how she put the cups on a five gallon bucket, even though she kept the lid and put the bucket on blocks. So I decided to follow her lead and make my own. 

Step One - Supplies: I started with ordering eight 300 Poultry Cup Drinkers from Cornerstone ($22.14 with shipping), enough for two buckets.

Then I grabbed two 5 gallon buckets from Home Depot. I got one that was white ($4.97) and an orange one (2.89) as well. The orange is cheaper than the white, but the white looks a little nicer.

Next, I needed the right tools. I have an electric drill, but not a drill bit the right size. I had waited until the cups arrived in the mail to size them to a bit. It turns out the 11/32" bit is the perfect size. Then I grabbed a tape measurer and a pen to mark the spot for the holes to be drilled.

Now we're ready for action.

Step Two - Measure and mark: The bucket is 33" around. With 4 cups I measured about every 8 inches around where I wanting the cups to be located. As far as the vertical placement, the water is pulled through the holes using gravity. So you will want them low enough to get as much water out of the bucket as possible, while still being high enough to let the bottom of the water hold any sediment that would float to the bottom. You don't want anything that falls into the bucket to clog the cups. Also, I learned that you want to place the cups high enough that when you set the bucket on a flat surface, the cups hover above the ground. If they extend below and the bucket has water in it, they'll snap right off (see my placement in the image below). So, the short story is - 1 1/2" inches from the bottom and every 8" around the bucket.

Step Three - Drill the holes.

Step Four - Holding the Poultry Cup at an angle I press it firmly enough into the drilled hole that it stays held itself. I then turn the cup, screwing into place, twisting it a little past when it is flush against the bucket to ensure it doesn't leak.

And that's it! After inserting all 4 cups, I take mine into the bathroom and do a water test run with the tub. You never know. Everything was in order and I took them to the coop to hang them up.

The orange one is hanging for the large hens to drink from in the main area of the run and the white one is balanced on boards for the 10 week old chicks to have in their area. Mike has been the only one I've seen drink from one of the cups so far, but I'm watching and hoping they all figure it out.

I did throw a water bottle full of salt water into the orange bucket to help with the freezing. I've found that it keeps the water from freezing for about another 5-10 degrees lower and the water around the bottle does not freeze, so it's not ever a solid block of ice.

Final Note - Total cost was about $17 for the white and $13 for the orange waterer. Worth every penny. See the final results in my coop below!

Chicken Learning Experience #1,387

**Warning: There are some Graphic Images below of my pecked chickens.

 So, the last couple of weeks has been an interesting learning experience in chicken keeping. I had my first heartbreak and it was completely my fault.

Of the chicks I inherited, I have four that are white. I mentioned before that I believed that they were leghorns, one female and three males (I now believe I white plymouth rocks, but that's another post). The males were getting mighty big and I'd had the chicks outside with my full grown orpingtons a few times and everyone seemed fine, so I made the huge mistake of putting the rocks in with the orpingtons in the run for a few hours and not watching them like I clearly should have been.

When I went back out the pecking had been brutal. All three of the rocks had been hit hard and the orpingtons were quickly shooed away. Two of them were hit on the back and wings and were walking about eating and drinking like normal, but the third one was seriously injured and did not survive.

So needless to say, I wrapped the two in towels and brought them into the house to be cared for and heal. I got some wound spray to help with the healing, added electrolytes to their water and started giving them medicated feed. I am unsure which worked well or if they really needed any of these, but they are doing just fine now and back in the run - properly and with protection from the orpingtons. 

This shows a portion of the current set up keeping the injured rocks from everyone, the remaining other chicks are in the setup under the coop, locked away and one of my orpingtons is in the walkway area, wondering why she can't get to them.

Below and to the left is what they looked like when I found them and got them inside. Seeing the blood was shocking for me, but they continued chowing down like normal and were drinking as well.

Below is a picture of them today. Their feathers are growing in nicely. Their behavior has not changed a bit. Excellent.

So, the point to my story is that this was quite a learning experience for me.

1. Apparently, even though I am not a vegetarian and I had considered harvesting these very chicks when they were older, I was devastated that they were picked on so badly and that one was picked to death. It bothered me tremendously knowing they were put in an environment where they were badly treated and I put them there.

2. Chickens are tough and despite looking quite plucked and smelling terrible with the injuries, they have healed quickly and nicely. They also didn't even slow down with eating and drinking.

3. 8 month old orpingtons can be jerks, but I love them. Even though I was irrationally mad at them for the evening, I am completely over it. The monsters.

4. Follow steps for introducing to your flock! This is so important! All of the chicks are in the run now, but kept from each other while they adjust to each others' presence. When the chicks get big enough, I'll start letting everyone take a closer look at each other - but with supervision.

5. I kept them in the house at first, while treating them, and that was fine for a small period of time. But as they are rocks, they are getting very large, fast, and I really wanted to get them out of the brooder, which would mean them being outside or wandering my home. So I looked into hen saddles and chicken diapers. After some sewing and trial and error, I have come to the conclusion that in this situation, they are not necessary. They have done just fine with the temperature outside and it did get down to 30 one night. The run is winterized and it's all good.

6. And as for chicken diapers - no. Just no.