h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I had this written in a text editor by 10pm on November 1, but when I went to copy-and-paste, I got Cloudflare. I continued getting Cloudflare until after 1:30am November 2...

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As anyone who knows me knows, I have chickens, and I enjoy them. Heck, A87846547 and A87858931 are pretty good clues for those that *don't* know me

Anyway, when I first got chickens, here in my not-zoned-for-roosters
neighborhood, I was only going to get fully-feathered pullets when I needed to add to my flock. I didn't want to deal with a heat lamp outside, and I certainly wasn't going to ever brood indoors. If I happened to get a broody hen, I'd get her eggs, but I most certainly was not going to ever incubate eggs myself.

Fast forward two years... I do, indeed, have a reliable broody in my flock. Frieda went broody for the first time early last fall. I was able to get 4 barnyard mix eggs from a local friend, one of which got broken during a nest box tussle (no longer an issue--no one messes with Frieda when she's broody, even if she's in "the best" nest box). The other three hatched out nice and healthy. They also all hatched out boys, as it turned out. Frieda mothered them for 12 weeks. I don't know how long she would've continued to mother them--it was getting close to Christmas, we were going to be out of town for a week and a half, and I didn't want the animal sitters to have to deal with it if the boys started crowing, so I sold them to the feedstore. Frieda went broody again in February. It took about a month to get her eggs this time, because I'd arranged in advance for some eggs for when she went broody again, and the hens in question decided to take a break right when we needed the eggs. The eggs did finally arrive, well packed, but the box was jammed sideways into my mailbox. This last straw damaged all the eggs quite badly, even the ones that appeared unbroken. By the time Frieda had been sitting for 5 weeks, she was done. Unfortunately, the eggs were only on day 10 or 11 of the 21 days chicken eggs need for incubation... By the time I managed to borrow an incubator, get it stabilized, and get the eggs in, the eggs had been cold for over 40 hours. This, combined with the shipping damge, was too much, and none of the eggs survived. Since my daughters (OK, and myself) were rather disappointed, I picked up some chicks at the feedstore, since I now knew that there were other ways than heat lamps and hens to keep chicks warm. I had thought ahead and gotten chickens I could easily resell once they were old enough to no longer need supplemental heat (and yes, I did sell them). This was in April. Having peeping chicks in the coop must've triggered hormone production, because a couple weeks later, Frieda was broody again. This time, I ordered some eggs from eBay after trying and failing to find eggs of a breed I wanted locally. These eggs also ended up not hatching. Frieda stuck with this clutch, though, so I got her some chicks at the feedstore the day they arrived. This was July 11, my h2g2 anniversary and PaperKid's birthday (getting chicks is a great thing to add to the list of "stuff to do to keep the guest of honor for a surprise party busy", just FYI) Frieda decided she was done with those pullets (immature female chickens) at about 7 or 8 weeks, and started laying (when she's not broody, she gives me 5-6 eggs a week). She went broody again 3 weeks ago...

Now, in and amongst all that, starting with the abandoned clutch, I made some friends on BYC (http://www.backyardchickens.com). One had found a bunch of incubators on Craigslist, and was only going to be keeping one of them, so I bought a small one from her. She sent it to me, and it arrived safely. Meanwhile, a half-joking comment led to another friend and I agreeing to swap eggs for home canned goods the next time Frieda went broody--I was going to incubate the eggs and then pass the chicks to Frieda. While we were waiting, I finally got around to ordering a hygrometer (to measure humidity) off of Amazon, along with some books. Since there was no hurry, I did the good, old-fashioned, slow, order-$35-worth-of-qualified-things-and-get-free-shipping deal--my daughter had gotten a $20 Amazon gift card, so I justified the hygrometer as part of the necessary purchases to bring the total up to free shipping The day after I placed the order is when Frieda went broody So now we were waiting on slow shipping to arrive before the eggs were sent. Everything got here on the very last day of the shipping estimate, of course My friend sent me the eggs when I told her my order had arrived, as I'd asked, and they arrived in pristine condition. There were also enough eggs to fill the incubator *and* the nest under Frieda. I made a thread on BYC to follow the progress of both clutches: http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/1036123/the-hatch-that-byc-built-aka-frieda-vs-the-brinsea-warning-pic-heavy (Those that go there will notice that the bulk of this journal entry did come from the initial post there, with some edits for non-chicken people, and to h2g2-ize a couple of things, such as the double significance of July 11, and smiley conversion/addition). The eggs are now on Day 14, and there are more developing than the 50% average for shipped eggs. There's still a week to go, though, and shipped eggs, because of the stress that shipping places them under, can fully develop, yet fail to hatch.

Now, my NaJoPoMo won't be all this year (probably) but I can safely tell you to expect incubating updates on Day 18 (which I'll explain the significance of then) and hatch day. Quite possibly on days 19 and 20, as well

This sounds like such hard work!

It probably gives you some eggcellent eggsercize, though.

I can identify, having chicken farmers in the family. In fact, we have three dressed pullets in the freezer right now, courtesy of the farm...

cluck cluck.

Amy good luck on all your endeavours on raising new chicks. I must need a lot of patience and take a lot of hard work in looking after hens.

Chickens! Yay! I wonder how like budgies they are? We are currently failing utterly to tame ours.

Does it march around with little red flags and chirp the Internationale?

This incubator's not a whole lot of work--and neither are the chickens, with the set up I have. I foresee later NaJoPoMo entries

Sol, so Himself finally has animals, huh?