Fired up the homemade incubator again

GardeningVet — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:58:35 +0000

When we went on holidays, we had a disaster in our chicken coop/run. I had a friend who was living nearby chicken-sit for us and because she only came around once a day to collect mail and eggs and care for the chickens, I thought I would make it easier for her by relieving her the task of having to lock them in at night so the coop door was open but the chickens were in the run. They coped okay for a week in that set up but I got a frantic call from her in our second week of holidays saying that she arrived to feathers in the run and no sign of the chickens. I suspected the worse. When we finally got home, we found that something had dug under the run fence and gotten into the run and left just feathers, no body parts, no chickens. Needless to say we were devastated. So after a whole 3 weeks of no chickens – I must say the backyard looked decidedly forlorn with no bwok-bwoks around. We finally succumbed and I decided to set more eggs again in the homemade incubator and start afresh. I cut up the expresspost bag to line the bottom of the foam incubator and will put in non-slip drawer lining when I stop turning – hopefully that will make clean up time after hatching a breeze. Here they are now :

chicken eggs in the homemade incubator

After 2 days incubating, I had a friend’s dad who was asking if I could help him incubate some of his King Quail eggs (some call them button quail) – his hen had been laying great guns but just refused to sit on them. Unfortunately I think the bulk of the eggs he gave me (14 in total) would be a tad ‘old’ to be setting but I popped them in the incubator anyway because I had the space. Hopefully some of them will hatch. I believe quails take a shorter time to hatch than chickens so hopefully if I’ve timed it right, they will all hatch together.

King Quail eggs in the incubator

Chicken musings

GardeningVet — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:06:42 +0000

Cute frizzle chickens

I never used to think much about chickens. In fact I don’t think I thought much about them at all. I was more used to the fluffy cuddly type pets like dogs and cats and bunnies. Having said that, since I’ve embarked on a suburban sustainability and a ‘tread lightly’ on this earth journey, it would appear that if you are even remotely trying to start an organic/permaculture type garden, then chickens are a must-have in the backyard. Thus started our chicken adventure and to be honest, they have grown on me and I really like them. They have funny little personalities and keep me company when I’m gardening.

Gardening Tips » Chickens

Fired up the homemade incubator again

Chicken musings