Well...I ended up with fourteen broody hens! It seems it is contagious. I did not think I would have so many. In a way it is good...at least I know the breeds I have will reproduce naturally...I let them all sit on eggs though...and now I have a lot of chicks. Not all of the eggs hatched, they kick them out of the nest sometimes but, I ended up taking a lot of them away from the broody sitting on them. The other hens tend to crawl in the nest with the broody hen and lay, they have broken eggs, and killed chicks doing this. I moved, or should I say tried to move the hens to the "Broody House", some of the hens did not like it and stopped sitting and started screaming at me. If they didn't stay on the nest after a couple of hours I let them out and took their eggs in the house and candled them.
I have an egg candler that basically looks like a flashlight with a rubber extension over the light, you place the egg on the rubber part and it shines up into the egg and you can basically see the contents of the egg. If an egg that is fertile has been sat on and brought up to a temperature of around 99 or so, it starts developing into a chick...you can tell by three days if it is developing. Generally you can see blood veins developing around the inside of the shell and a dark little body forming, it is about the size of a tiny pea at three days...sometimes a little bigger. If they were developing, I put them in the incubator...if not, they were either dog food or went into the trash. My chickens destroyed my compost area, so I will eventually start another and start putting the bad or previously sat on eggs in it...just have not started another one yet.
I have had chicks hatching every day for two weeks. Some days, only one or two hatch...other days up to 11 have hatched. I have not had to aid any of the chicks in getting out of the shells. There is a big difference when you hatch eggs from your hens and eggs through the mail. Even with opening the incubator multiple times a day, they hatch without help. The chicks are stronger and healthier at hatch and no problems with sticky chick, or dried membranes or birth defects from my chicks! But, getting eggs through the mail is necessary to get the endangered breeds and the breeds people want the most, that is why I have been doing it. I have not been selling enough eggs lately...so I decided to try and sell chicks. We shall see how that goes. Oh, and with the chicks that I hatched from eggs through the mail...I have about 100 chicks between less than 24 hours old and two and a half weeks old...well, and 14 turkey poults, and about 45 chicks in the grow out pen that are from 8 weeks to 10 weeks old, the others that I hatched this year are out wandering around the yard like big chickens do...going on 4 months old, it won't be long until they start laying. Hopefully I will sell some of my chicks and get the money from them to work on my breeding pens. Until my breeding pens are complete, I won't be able to separate the chickens and have full blooded breeds...and that is what I must do to make enough money to fuel my business...OK, continue my addiction, but make money enough to feed them hopefully!
Oh, on that note...I won some auctions on eBay and have more eggs coming. Hopefully I will have some successful hatches out of them. People want Black Copper Marans hens for their chocolate colored brown eggs...well, hopefully I will have a bunch hatch and they won't all be boys! I will keep some of the babies for my breeding stock, and sell the rest. I will have Black Copper, Blue Splash and Blue Marans and hopefully be breeding by the end of the summer...then I can hatch babies of those and sell hatching eggs in the winter time...just thinking...I just may need more breeding pens built!
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