Friday, January 9, 2015

Mini Sauls

Look what I found in the incubator on Wednesday morning!


I was shocked - even though the incubator's temperature and humidity had kept pretty constant, I didn't really think it would actually work! The humidity was low throughout the first 18 days - staying at 30-35% instead of the recommended 40-45%. One day I went downstairs and the thermometer was reading 103 degrees - it should be 101 at the most, so I thought no eggs would hatch after that. 

They kept hatching all through the day on Wednesday and through the night, and then one more late on Thursday. 12 chicks total! 1 hatched and then died, and there are still 6 eggs in the incubator that I'll leave for a few more days just in case (apparently even though most hatch on day 21, there is a chance some could hatch up until day 25). 5 of the eggs in there were blue, and only 2 of those hatched. Maybe that's because I stored them for a full week to collect all 5 before setting them? I didn't turn them during that week and I should have. Also, the blue ones are so dark that it's really hard to candle them with the flashlight that I was using. I couldn't really tell if they were developing properly.

Here's chick #1 (Uno) almost dry and #2 just hatched. You can see the blue egg has been "unzipped" and it hatched 5 mins after this photo!


Yesterday we worked on getting the garden beds ready for the spring. We took out a bunch of our mishmashed raised beds (we'd made them out of shelves, etc. that we'd found around the farm) and instead we made a bunch of straight longer beds. We're going to set up some gravity irrigation from the rain tank that's up the hill, and it's easier to set it up if the beds are pretty uniform. Nathan also put gutters on all of the outbuildings with tanks underneath each so the sheep will have fresh drinking water at each rotation through the pastures this spring. 

Look at our new neighbours! The chickens snuck through the gate to the neighbour's pasture and were met with some very curious new faces. The cows then proceeded to chase Saul all the way through the field while he squawked and half crowed. Poor guy - didn't look too impressive to his ladies, I'm sure. Good thing his 12 new offspring didn't see it happen.


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