It's alive! It's alive! It's alive! Muhahahaha!

Okay, maybe I'm a little carried away. Really, though, you have to admit this is pretty cool. On day 6, one of our little eggs is definitely, positively alive!!! I was so worried yesterday that our little experiment was at an end but now I know that at least one of my little guys is still going strong. And here's the proof:

Houston, we have movement!

After a serious temperature fluctuation last night, I was not feeling hopeful. I've still been turning the eggs but I was pretty sure I'd blown it. I decided to candle them just now to see what I could see and . . . there's definite veining and MOVEMENT in egg #3.

That's right! Movement!!! I'm way, way too excited. :-) I'll take a picture later and post it.

Candling hatching eggs--or not so hatching eggs

The eggs went into the incubator on Friday, so this is really the absolute earliest that I would be able to see the beginning of any veining in my eggs. Like when I was trying to get pregnant with my daughter, I've totally jumped the gun. The fact that there isn't any veining visible when I shine my high powered flashlight through them doesn't mean they won't hatch--it just means I'm very impatient. :-)

Candling eggs doesn't actually require the use of a candle these days. Instead I used my handy-dandy maglight and made a "tunnel" out of my hand with the flashlight at one end and the egg at the other. At left is a picture of a 3 day old egg from the folks at BackYardChickens.com. What I'm looking for are the veins that indicate the chick is starting to grow. And I don't see them. Sigh.

So my goal for the next couple of days is going to be patience. It may be Friday before I see anything--but I think I should see something by then. I'll be very disappointed if we don't even make it out of the gate on our first try, but if that's the case we'll just try again. I'm commited to this whole endeavor--from the perspective of providing a great experience for my daughter, to not providing support of current commercial poultry practices, to having fresh, organic, truly locally grown food on our plates every day. So I guess we're in it for the long haul. ;-)

Choosing an incubator for your fertile eggs

When your main criteria is cost--in that you don't want to spend more than $20--your incubator options narrow pretty quickly. In fact, you're left with only two choices: to buy a Chick-bator, pictured below, or to build your own.

Well, I decided that while the materials might be cheap, the time to gather and assemble them (and the shear will required to finish any project lately) would be better spent on building the coop we'll (hopefully) need in 6-8 weeks. I also had a coupon, which may have been the determining factor. :-)

According to the people at PoultryHelp.com I've made a horrible mistake. Not my first one, to be sure, but I'm still a little worried. After polling the nice folks hanging out on the boards at BackYardChickens.com, though, I think we do still have a fighting chance.

While I do think I should invest in a hygrometer to measure the humidity (and it looks like Home Depot has one for $2.98, which is within my budget), it seems like we have all of the components for success. Our setup may need a little more attention than an expensive incubator but I'm enjoying checking on the little darlings. Since I should be able to work from home almost every day for the next three weeks, I don't think we're quite doomed (yet).

UPDATE: I was actually able to find a free hygrometer on freecycle. It's only a couple of miles away--even closer than Home Depot--so I'm saving $2.98 plus tax as well as a little bit of gas. ;-) Just goes to show that you really don't have to spend a bundle to have fresh, organic food. A huge amount of effort, yes, but a lot of money, no.

Hatching eggs require . . .

What do fertile hatching eggs require to, well, hatch? Not too much, it turns out. They need to be kept at an even temperature so I put a little thermometer on top of the eggs and adjusted a 7 watt lightbulb with a small square of aluminum foil. They need a little humidity so I filled one of the legs of the incubator with water. And they need to be turned. At least three times a day. Really, that doesn't seem like such a huge commitment.

It turns out, though, that turning a hatching egg is a little more complicated than I originally thought. For starters, you have to mark the top and bottom of the eggs so that you're turning it as close to 180 degrees as you can each time.

When turning a fertile egg in the incubator, you also have to make sure to always keep the "big" end of the egg tilted up. That's fine as long as you can tell which end of the egg is "big." On one of my eggs it isn't so obvious. I've pretty much guessed, so we'll keep our fingers crossed for that little guy.

Besides determining the proper tilt, though, the hard part seems to be just scheduling the turns themselves. Today we were out for 12 hours at a special event. I turned the eggs this morning at 6am but didn't get the chance to turn them again until 7pm. It's important to turn them an odd number of times each day so that they don't spend consecutive nights on the same side, so I'll stay up as late as I can (probably around 10pm) and turn them again. Hope I don't end up with little lopsided chicks. :-)

Fertile eggs? Check! Incubator? Check!

The pieces are finally all in place. Last night I assembled our Chick-bator Incubator and set it up to monitor the temperature. After much fiddling and rearranging, I finally got it to a steady 100 degrees. This morning our three potential chicks arrived:

Now we're ready for the pieces to all come together. I very carefully marked the top and bottom of each egg and numbered them. (I'm open to giving them names.) I put them in the incubator--which is inside a kitchen cabinet to protect it from drafts--at cats. It happens to be the cabinet in which I keep the dog treats, so hopefully my little organic chicks won't develop a subconscious desire for beef jerky. :-)

And here they are in all of their glory. This will be the eggs' home for the next 21 days . . .

Our hatching eggs have arrived!

Big thanks to Jenifer at Blue Daze Farm for sending out our little future chicks so quickly! The package arrived at the post office this morning bright and early. I called to make sure they would keep it there--instead of driving it around in a hot mail truck all day--and went to pick it up. I loved the little drawing and warnings on the side, but they freaked the post office ladies out a little. They were positive they had heard noises from the box and that the chicks were going to peck their way out at any moment. :-)

Opening the box was like Christmas morning! The inside was filled with pink packing peanuts, which I carefully sifted through to unearth the three very carefully packaged farm-fresh eggs inside. Each egg was individually wrapped in bubble wrap and sealed in its own little baggy for the ride. It looks like all of this care did the job, too, because the shells at least are in perfect condition.

As most of my friends know, I have a hard time distinguishing between green and blue so I won't venture to guess at the color of the eggs, although it's definitely one or the other. :-) The eggs are on the small size but feel unusually heavy--maybe because they're fertile or just because they're organic? I know the supposedly cage-free eggs at the grocery store are often just like the commercial eggs in everything but name and color. We had fertile eggs as a child (my grandmother's neighbor raised chickens) but I haven't really been exposed to them as an adult. I'm so excited that Gus will get the opportunity to (hopefully) see these eggs hatch and raise the chicks. I'm looking forward to one day having access to real organic fresh eggs that we know come from the healthiest--and most humane--environment possible.