Its a Girl!....

...Or is it a boy?  Actually, there will be a few dozen of both.  We start a new batch of chicks twice a year to keep our egg supply up.  In the spring, we generally order them through a hatchery and they come in the mail.  When we order them, the hatchery can "sex them", meaning separate the pullets (hens) from the cockerels (roosters).  That way, we can order several pullets for their eggs, just a few cockerels and we can keep our brood from getting too inbred when we hatch in the Fall.  However, when its time to start the new batch in the Fall, the weather is too cool for the hatchery to mail them.  So we incubate our own.  Obviously, we get both pullets and cockerels.  We have to incubate extra eggs to make sure we get enough pullets to keep up with our demand for eggs. 



It takes 21 days for a chick to form.  For the first 18 days (or so), we have the eggs on an egg turner in the incubator.  Its a contraption that continually gently rotates the eggs to keep the chick inside healthy.  After that set amount of time, I take the eggs off the turner, put them directly on the mesh on the floor of the incubator and rotate them by hand for a few days until they hatch.  The incubator is heated to just shy of 100 degrees, thus the thermometer allowing me to adjust the heat setting if needed.  The egg turner only holds 41 eggs so, even though I needed more chicks than that, the amount of chicks is already predetermined for us.  The past two Falls, I have incubated two batches, but this year I didn't get started in time for the second batch.  The eggs get too cold before their brought in from the hen house and they're no longer hatchable.




When its been almost 21 days, I start looking for progress.  This year, the eggs started two days early for some odd reason.  The hatching process starts with just a little crack, always on the "big end" of the egg.  After the initial teeny crack, the chick takes a long break.  And then after several hours (sometimes as long as 12!)....




...the chick is rested up enough to turn that teeny crack into a hole.  When it gets to this point, I put the eggs in a container so that they are isolated when they hatch and won't disturb the other eggs.




The hole eventually is worked into a crack all the way around the egg.




And out pops a baby chick!  They are wet when they come out, but no blood.  As soon as they are dry (like the older chick you see in this picture),  Josh moves them out to the hog house into a heated tub with bedding, food and water. 




The brothers and sisters stay cozy together.   The chick on the right is still learning how to stay balanced!   I think we've almost reached 30 chicks since starting hatching three days ago.  Like I said, we needed more, but Spring will be here soon enough and we'll be able to make do until then.





And, of course, the incubator is quite the attraction with the chicks inside.  The kids check several times a day to see how many new babies we've had and always first thing in the morning to see how many hatched over night.