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Hi all,
I fired up our incubator 3 weeks ago & heres the result, our first successful hatching.
They are a breed called Isa brown, a cross breed between a Rhode Island Red and a Sussex or at least their parents are. We have 11 hens & 2 roosters in the hen house, these little ones will be for eating. shhhh don't tell them don't want to upset them. lol
Are you Mummy or Daddy??
:D I guess i'm both or none lol.
We have 5 Isa browns, they are perhaps 6 months old, bought them at 16 weeks from a breeder. Great little chooks, good temperament, like to be picked up (!), egg laying machines. They were the first chooks we've ever had and I recommend them to anyone who hasn't had chickens before. They don't attack you or each other and they always like a chat. Only downside so far is that if you let them out they will turn your garden upsidedown.:wink:Quote:
Originally Posted by Rattrap
Obvoiusly not news to you Rattrap:wink: Is the corragated plastic in the box so they don't get stuck in the corners? Have you considered naming them? I'll get the ball rolling with the suggestions of Roast and Schnitzel.:D
Love the little dance they do when they want to be picked up.
Ben.
Hi Ben yer we've had the isa browns for round 5 years now & as u said they are all really friendly girls, so much so that i gotta remember to keep the front door shut or they will come inside & say hello. lol. They also like to come into my shed & say hello, not keen on that either as they also like to crap on my scrap wood pile.
They're great layers too, from our 11 hens we normally get 3-4 dozen eggs a week which pays for their feed plus a bit left over.
I told the missus that i was gonna start naming them, honey & lemon, friday roast, schnitzel etc - she was not impressed. lol. Its gonna be hard not to get too attached to them - don't want to it'll make the day the axe has to fall too hard. We eat alot of chicken here & eventually i'd like to be supplying all our own chicken meat so i'm going to have to get used to the job. Done the deed plenty of times since we've been here - still hate it with a vengence. lol.
You are spot on with the corrigated plastic at the ends, its to stop them from getting stuck in the corners. If they do the chicks in the outermost corners can get smothered & die.
We had our final hatching this morning so the final tally is 17 chicks from 24 eggs, not a bad ratio at all for the first hatching. The temp regulators in these foam incubators isn't worth a pinch of chicken poop, i'm having to adjust the temp up every morning & back down at night even tho our lounge room where i have it never varies in temp more than round 10c - thankyou indoor heating. This is something i'm going to have to sort out, either replace the temp regulator with a digital version or invest in a better quality incubator but that would be a very expensive way to go. A good incubator would set me back upwards of $500 - thats alot of breast fillets!
They will stay in this small cardboard box for a few more days yet then i'll move them into a bigger box for another week or 2 depending on their size & activity. Eventually i'll move them out to the room i have built along side the adult chicken coop, it connects to the adult coop via a small chook door. They'll need heat tho for a good 4-6 weeks yet but after round 4 weeks i'll let them play in the adult coop during the day while the big girls & their boys are out doing their thing in the bush.
Perhaps if you could stun them electricly before the axe might make the job slightly more bearable, so at least they are already limp?
I'm told they lay about 300 eggs each a year and so far ours provide one each every morning, almost a half doz. a day. The cook is now activly seeking recipies with lots of eggs ....."oh, look a pavlova takes x eggs"..... life is hard.:wink: Hung a sign on the gate a sold all we had the other day, she was quite pleased with herself.
Even though they are friendly do you still have troubles putting the smaller chooks with the big ones?
I haven't in the past when on the rare occasions that a hen has sat on a clutch of eggs but i think its better not to take the chance when they are very small. Once they are big enough to be able to run away then it shouldn't be a problem. I think its only an issue when the chickens are caged all the time, ours free range over our 22 acres for most of the day then return home on their own at night. About the only down side i've found with the isa browns is that they make lousy mums, they rarely if ever sit on a clutch of eggs but on the flip side it also means that they rarely stop laying - only when they moult 2 times a year for a couple of weeks. Even in the winter when most other chooks will pretty much stop laying these girls will keep pumping the eggs out all be it at a lower rateQuote:
Originally Posted by Ben from Vic.
On the subject of the deadly deed i don't think i'd like to stun them with electricity - more likley i'd stun myself. lol.
A fellow down the road has a good system that i'm going to adopt, he has a tin cone mounted to a post, point down, open ended, he quickly stuffes the chicken in the cone the head pops out the bottom where he can quickly & humanely cut the throat. No ugly headless chook running around this way too. What a horrible subject to talk about! lol
Is this your first run with the incubator? I've seen them on ebay and wondered about their efficiency, particularly the temp control. I've also heard that the overall efficiency drops off over time, something to do with needing to replace or clean the foam box. We run Welsumers, good laying chooks, fine non-aggressive roosters, but they don't always go broody when it suits me. I have looked at a few incubators and they all seem a bit on the expensive side. I wonder about making up my own from decent components from scratch as an alternative.
burraboy i tried making my own incubator but didn't have much luck myself but then i didn't have a good thermistat. Temp control is the single biggest issue with them, 101f is the optmium temp & only a few degrees either way & you've lost the clutch. The eggs can take slight dips in temp but if it goes over 103f u can kiss them goodbye. I put my incubator into a cardboard box with towels around the incubator inside the box & it did help quite a bit with temp regulation but i was still getting swings of 97 - 102f from morning to night & could never find a happy medium with the control. The other issue with incubators is humidity. Its also got to be pretty well controled, too low & the chicks will dry out & die early or stick to the inside of the egg shell, too high & when they are ready to hatch & break the internal membraine they drown. I had 2 drown in their shells, at least thats what i've put their failure down to as they were fully formed but dead in the shell.
These foam incubators have a plastic water tray with a number of seperate channels, you fill 1 channel & u get around 40% humidity which is perfect for the first 18 days then u fill another channel for the last 3-5 days & u get 75% humidity which u need for the final hatching to stop them sticking to the inside of the shell.
The foam incubators come in a maunal turning system - ie u do all the turning yourself, 3 times a day, which is the sort i bought or u can get an automatic turner. I would really recomend the automatic turner. Having to turn them every day, 3 times a day can get a little annoying, also u would get a more constant temp because you arn't opening the incubator all the time & also when the chicks start to hatch all the eggs are supported in the cradle. When my chicks started to hatch they were knocking the rest of the eggs all over the place. Its important that the eggs stay with the same face up for the final 3-5 days or the chicks can drown if they try to hatch face down. I lost another chick that had begun to hatch but the egg was knocked upside down.
I havn't read about these foam boxes failing after a time, cleaning is an absoulte must. I rinced mine out well & will bleach it out well before i use it again.
I han't heard of the Welsumer chicken so i googled, they are a nice looking chook very similar to the isa brown.
My dear departed father used to work on a farm and I remember go up with him, I was about 5, and holding the torch as he plucked the excess young roosters from the old pepppercorn trees and into the hessian sack. He used to tell me that it was a chicken tree!
Drive home, truss the legs and hang them upside down from the clothesline then off with a head, rotate the line and the next one, etc Often would do 12-15 at a time. Open 'em up and remove the icky stuff. Then into the hot water to soften things up to make plucking easier, the smell of wet chickens today still brings the memories flooding back. We used to have roast chicken every Sunday lunch until it was lambing season but that is a different more macabre story.
We had Isa Browns until three weeks ago then they went to live on a farm, :;, that's what we told the kids anyhow. They chooks were eating the eggs and once this habit starts it is almost impossible to stop, even tried debeaking as a last resort but still no good. As soon as the egg was laid and the cackling started the others would run into the shed and within a minute egg gone.
Picked up some 12-14 week old pullets from the Queen Vic Market in Melbourne for about $10 each, breed?? Well we have three white ones (Leghorns?) and three brown ones (Look like Isa's?) that is all I know.
I've had this problem in the past and always found that a few mustard eggs over a period will fix the problem. Blow an egg and fill with a mustard water mix, leave it in the nesting box and when its gone, put in another one. It doesn't take long for them to get the messageQuote:
Originally Posted by rotten_66
Thanks for the tip will have to remember it. :2tsup:Quote:
Originally Posted by burraboy
Know a friend in the country who had heard of doing something similar by filling eggs with a caustic soda mix to fix snakes that take eggs.
I've not really had this problem, i've had times when eggs get broken & eaten but i find that if i let them out early to free range then the hens come back during the day to lay the eggs & i try to collect them asap that way the temptation gone. I had a problem with soft egg shells once & a friend suggested baking & crumbling the egg shells then feeding them to the chooks, by baking them it was supposed to discrouage them from breaking eggs - don't beleive it! i had a bad run of egg breaking for 2 -3 weeks straight after. I now keep liberal amounts of shell grit in their feeding bins, no more soft egg shells.
The SWMBO has been telling me to not get too attached it'll make the final day much harder - fat chance! lol. They are just so cute & fragile can't help but get attached.
Prevention is often better than cure and with that in mind, I used a commercial "Roll-away" nest box in our fowl house. I built that with left over mudbricks and with a bit of planning was able to build it into the wall. That certainly removes the temptation and opportunity for egg eating. I also have a wire basket attached to the wall filled with cuttleshell collected from the beach over holidays and that seems to reduce the occurrence of soft shells.
Welsumers are not that common and I can't remember where we got ours from originally. There are a few fanciers about though and we get new roosters ocassionally for a bit of fresh blood. There is some variation in the hens as they are descended from various leghorns and Isas over several generations but are gradually conforming to Welsumer standard colouring. Chicks are most attractive, hatching out brown/yellow striped.
Well have found a breeder near Bendigo that has some stock in the right age bracket for sale, so going for a drive on Saturday. She has Welsummers, Barnevelders, Wyandottes and Orpingtons, and a few various cross breeds of these.
As far as the egg eating goes, debeaking was the last resort but before I got to that stage, I tried these
- Elevated the nesting boxes by 8-10 inches (Still lower than the perches though)
-Tried putting hessian covers over the entry to the nest (Had heared that highish light levels can increase the egg eating)
- Was checking the nest boxes very fequently especially in the morning to remove the temptation.
Elderly uncle suggested debeaking about three inches back from the tip of the beak :D
SWMBO thinks it is great 'cos it means she can go to Bendigo Pottery and spend some $$ on stuff she likes not "more bloody chooks".