The Great Incubation - 2012

It seems like lately on the farm we have spent every free weekend processing chickens and ducks and turkeys and rabbits. It had been a while since we fired up the incubators and started cookin a fresh batch of babies, so we starting collecting eggs. Lots of eggs. 

Pictured above are most of the eggs that we started incubating about a month ago. We had duck, chicken, guinea, and turkey eggs all ready to go. The cardboard slats under the eggs are my own crazy invention to keep the eggs from rolling around on the trays and to make it easier to turn them by just rolling them over the slats 3 times a day.

I should note that we threw the turkey eggs in there just for the heck of it. Right now we don't have a tom old enough to service our two remaining broad breasted white ladies. We thought what the heck, maybe we would end up with an immaculate Turk-ception! 

First to hatch were the chickens. We have kind of a nice system set up for hatching now. When we bought the farm, the previous owner left us this wonderful cabinet incubator that works great. The only problem is that it is completely enclosed, so come hatch time we cannot see what's going on. Plus, I have a completely unfounded theory that the little ones need some light to find their way out of their shells. So when hatch time comes around, all the eggs are moved to our styrofoam Hovabator where we can monitor their progress. It's also nice because we can stagger hatches if we want to and use the Hovabator just when it's time for lockdown.

We ended up with 42 mixed chicks. All these chicks were all fathered by our TSC white broiler rooster who grew up to be big as a house. Their moms were our Ameraucana and gold and silver laced Wyandotte girls. We are hoping by mixing the breeds we can get a happy medium of chicks that grow at a fast but healthy rate.

I cannot get over the color variety we got. The rooster is totally white, and we did get some little yellow chicks that will take after him, but we also got these speckle-faced chicks...

And a bunch of black chicks with just a yellow spot on their head. It'll be neat to see how they all turn out.

They very quickly outgrew our small inside brooder so we moved them out to a cage in the poultry house with plenty of space....

...and a portal to hell!! 

Just kidding, but that infrared brooding light is hell to try and take pictures with.

After another week, the duck and the guinea eggs were ready to hatch. We have never had any luck hatching off season ducks. We always get great hatch rates in the spring then next to nothing any other time of the year. That was certainly the case with this hatch. We only ended up with 3 ducklings. Two of which were male and one of those males has some crazy deformity thing going on that reminds me of spina bifida of the skull and I swear I saw part of a toe handing off the back of his head before the fluff dried. I think he'll be ok, but what the heck are we gonna do with a potentially handicapped drake?!

We did end up with 7 guinea keets. These guys will really come in handy keeping the tick population in check. We plan on setting up a coop for them in the back pasture once we finish fencing back there so they can act as pest control. That baby guinea may be cute now, but they get ugly and super noisy very quickly. In my opinion, the farther away those guineas live from the house, the better!

Quails a'plenty

We got quails! 

After a short two weeks in the 'bator, the quail eggs started popping like popcorn. 

 Of the fifty-something eggs we put in to cook, we ended up with 39 walnut sized, chipmunk colored quail babies or "cheepers." 

This time I got smart and lined the brooder box with puppy pee pads. They are absorbent, offer better footing than newspaper, and I can toss them when they get too soiled (which happens pretty quick with almost 40 little birds all pooping in the same area). I used to use towel to line the brooder, and boy was that a gross cleanup job.

 The brick is in the brooder to absorb heat from the lamb and help keep the tiny little guys warm.

These cheepers are so tiny that the regular crumbled poultry food is too big for them. We have to toss cupfuls into the food processor before offering it to them.

So what does fate hold for these little guys? 

Since we had a number of adults disappear on us, we will be using a lot of the females from this group to restore our numbers. The males will probably end up as food.

Unfortunately since the law considers quail to be game birds instead of poultry, we cannot legally sell them for human consumption. Luckily, there is a good market for exotic meats for raw cat and dog food in our area so any extra males will be processed and sold for healthy, natural pet food. 

ETA: Here is a little video I took on my phone of the day old babies. Everything looks red because the are under an infrared heat lamp.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaaHcqsUGD4&feature=g-upl

Quails comin

The incubator went into lockdown today. 

We should be lousy with baby quail very soon. I think we have decided that it really isn't worth it to raise quail for meat since it takes at least 2-3 birds to make a decent meal for one person. There does seem to be some interest in the eggs though, so we are going to try and get a few more females from this batch. Right now their enclosure is so big for the few that we have that it is more like a habitat. We have plenty of space for more girls. The males will probably make an appearance on Big Onion's food blog though.