The Incubation Experiment

After a trip to see old friends in the old world, a Hungarian wedding, and an adventure due to tornadoes in Texas, I'm thrilled to be back in our life here in sunny New Mexico.

If you've noticed our Instagram has been all chicks lately, in April we watched our first little Renegade Chicks break out into the world!  This was a totally new experience for Cameron & I, we rescued a rooster "Paddie" back in February with the intention of incubating soon after.

Americauna (rescued) Rooster- "Paddie"

We got around to it when Molly came to visit and we made a trip to Dan's Boots & Saddles to get 5 day-old chicks and an incubator.  We quickly plugged it in and placed 30 eggs inside.  Looking back we didn't even think to clean off the eggs, and learned after the fact that the bacteria from the little bit of chicken poo on the outside of some of the eggs can traverse the shell and compromise the growing cell.  Now that seems obvious, but we also wanted to keep the natural anti-bacterial barrier that envelopes every egg when its laid fertilized or not, this is how fresh eggs stay so fresh without refrigeration.


Chicken incubation takes about 21 days, it requires turning the eggs 3 times a day and keeping the humidity up by adding water to the bottom of the incubator.

After 7 days we did our first 'candle test' to see if the eggs were fertilized, and we were amazed to see:

We were freaking out! Our eggs were actually fertilized and growing...I mean we knew that Paddie the rooster was a big fan of our ladies but to actually see the cell spreading across the egg like that was just incredible!  We checked all the eggs and only 3 weren't growing so we removed them from the incubator with 27 possible chicks left.

Over the next two weeks we candle tested twice more, with some questionable looking eggs - but with no prior knowledge of the incubation process we didn't want to take out any eggs that could be chicks.

By day 20 we started to hear peeping in the mud room where we were keeping the incubator.  At first we both thought we were going a little crazy hearing random peeping, but finally we confirmed (thank you google) that chicks do start peeping while still inside their egg, another amazing fact that completely tripped us out!

By day 21 we saw the first little 'pips' (small cracks) on the shells, where the chicks started to peck themselves out, but it wasn't until late in day 22 that we saw our first little chick hatch.

Day 22 was a Sunday evening after the Earth Day Fest put on by La Montanita Co-op, where Cameron works.  We spent the day passing out flyers for the Mile-Hi Farmers' Market, meeting friends and dancing, such a great way to Sunday.  And once we got home we could feel it was time and set up chairs to watch the hatch...two hours later our first green-egg chick was finally out.

later named Sweet Cheeks:

A couple hours later another green-egg chick hatched and we made a time-lapse video!

 

The next evening (day 23) we had two more hatch, one green-egg chick and one brown-egg chick.
The green-egg chick (Americauna) was particularly adorable, named Little Dot:

And unfortunately the next day we found one chick died during the hatching process...it was sad because she was almost all the way out but gave into the exhaustion.  She was in a brown egg, and the only brow-egg laying hens we had were Barred Rock chickens with an Americauna Rooster...so we are guessing that the first 3 born out of green colored eggs (Americauna hens) hatched so easily because their parents were of the same breed.  We have no idea if this is true but, the one chick that hatched last hatched out of a brown egg and she got spraddle-leg.  Spraddle-leg is when a chick slips on one of her legs and the leg stays extended out to the side instead of growing under the chick, this causes them to develop poorly.  We attempted to fix her spraddle-leg by using gauze & medical tape to create a little cast, as we read on the internet, and this seemed to have worked.  After I returned home from my trip her development was no where close to the other chicks born with her and her feet were severely deformed, so we couldn't keep her.
 Then very sadly a few days later we noticed that Little Dot's leg was broken and very swollen, the other chicks were picking on her, so again we decided to put an end to her obvious pain.  Cameron & I were so sad about Little Dot she was such a charismatic little chick that we would've probably became a fun chicken to keep around, maybe not even rent out but keep her in our flock :( 

So after incubating 30 eggs we only got 2 healthy chicks, who are now out of the brooder and in the coop with the 5 older chicks we bought from the store.  For our first incubation run this feels like an accomplishment to have had any eggs hatch.

Tonight we are warming up the incubator for our second run, this time with Renny's fertilized eggs - so only Barred Rock breed chicks, the breed we know and love best.

Barred Rock Rooster - "Renny"

Barred Rock Hen - "Puffin Bones"

We definitely learned from the first incubation in true 'Renegade' fashion:
 trial & error // trial & success



forever grateful for the fragile gift of life*

jennifer