Setting Up The Incubator

Things are pretty small scale here on the homestead and raising chickens is no exception.  The flock that I currently have is a mixed age flock of various dual purpose breeds.  Right now I have nine hens and two roosters (soon to be one).  The hens provide more than enough eggs for me plus a few extra dozen a month that I can sell to put towards their feed bill.  While I don't sell enough to make a profit from their eggs, I am happy if I can break even with their feed bill.  In addition to selling eggs, I also use the extra birds (roosters) for my own meals.  A couple of years ago I raised a large batch of chickens for meat (28 chickens was a lot for me).  I still have some of those birds in my freezer, but they are almost gone.  From that experience I learned that I would rather raise smaller, more frequent batches of chicks than to raise one large batch all at once.  Processing the birds is far less daunting when you only have to do two or three at a time as opposed to a marathon session of twenty five.  That large batch of chickens did give me a good selection of roosters and I narrowed it down to a few with what I considered desirable traits to use in breeding more chickens for my future flock.  Those lucky fellows got to shack up with the ladies for the winter and the following year I hatched two more rounds of chicks to add to my flock at no additional cost to me (other than feeding).

This year I am going to hatch a few more chickens with the eventual plan of replacing some of the older hens in the flock.  I won't get rid of all of the older ladies, but I want to keep the flock at a manageable size for me, so all the "bonus" chickens will go into the freezer.  I am going to keep my current good rooster for the foreseeable future and any young roosters that hatch will be destined for the freezer.  I was hoping that I would be able to allow the hens to hatch out some of their own chicks (saving me much time and trouble), but none of my hens have become broody so far.  My back up plan is to use my own incubator to hatch out my own chicks at home.  

I have had this incubator for years now and though the hatch rate isn't super high, I still manage to hatch out small batches of chicks every time I have used it.  It is a very basic incubator that has a small heating element and a fan for air circulation.  There is a shallow water tray that lies under the screen that the eggs rest on to help increase humidity during incubation.  This incubator is so low tech that I have to manually turn the eggs several times a day to give them the best chance for hatching.  

I am hoping that this year's hatch will be a higher percentage than I have gotten in years past.  Most of my hens are 1-2 years old so they are in their laying prime and they have been living with the current rooster for several months, so I am certain that most of the eggs are fertile.  The girls have really started to lay well in the past few weeks, so I have saved the freshest eggs from the last couple of days at room temperature just for the purpose of hatching.  The eggs I have selected are clean, smooth and of uniform shape and texture.  I don't want to continue to breed any chickens that lay misshapen eggs, so using the nice ones for hatching should take care of that problem.

I am setting the eggs according to the recommendations of the the farmer's almanac.  They recommend setting eggs so that they will hatch during a fruitful period.  The best days for setting eggs this month are the forth and the fifth, so I needed to get everything ready for incubation by the third.  Setting up the incubator is easy, just plug it in and adjust the thermostat so that the temperature inside stays steady at 99-100 degrees.  I usually let the incubator run for a full day before I set eggs just to make sure that it can maintain the correct temperature.  I will add water to the tray when I set the eggs in to begin incubation.  I am going to try to hatch twelve eggs this time.  I choose twelve because if they do all hatch successfully I won't be overwhelmed with chicks.  Twelve is slightly more than I would actually want, but I don't expect every single egg to hatch either.  If I end up with between six and ten chicks I will be happy.