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| Don't count your chickens before they're hatched........... |
| 08.29.07 (1:07 pm) [edit] |
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Thought I’d try and throw an entry in. It’s been a while About two years ago it was my daughters third birthday. I had just picked her up from childcare and on the way home I noticed a sign saying chickens for sale $3each. So in we went and we chose six. One died in the first week but the other 5 grew up into two males and three females and after a few months we were getting 2 to 3 eggs a day. We had had chooks before and when the hens went broody we hadn’t had much luck with the hens hatching out the chickens. This time was no different and when one of the chooks went broody more than three weeks passed and then the crazy chook left the eggs and still no chickens. I had been telling the kids soon we will have some chicks running around. So there I was with egg on my face so to speak because of some $3 psychotic chook that hadn’t had her maternal instincts instilled into her properly couldn’t hatch an egg.
AND that’s when the fun started. I told the kids we would incubate the eggs ourselves. I looked up various chicken sites on the internet and to buy a three egg incubator was something like $150. I had heard of some people hatching out eggs using an electric frying pan ‘So I bought one for $60 dollars and for the next month tried to hatch out some eggs to no avail. So I reasoned the temperature fluctuations must be too great and I built a box for better insulation around the frying pan with wire drawers to sit the eggs on and with a glass side so that we (being kids and me) could watch our chicks hatching out. After another month of waiting for some egg action we still had not one little chicken. So I reasoned the frying pan thermostat wasn’t sensitive enough and went and bought a brewers thermostat (one for making beer) for $140. You’re starting to get a feeling of where this is going now right?
Yeah well we go another month. I started keeping notes, doing graphs and I bought an inside outside weather station thermometer with humidity sensor for another $50. So I saved eggs up for 10 days, just over 2 dozen then started our new sophisticated Incubator. Dog Dang it! 21 days and lots of waiting 2 chicks hatch out. Woo who!
This storey is quite a bit longer but I’ve done enough writing to last me for another year of blogging. Unless you really want to here more. |