We, in our infinite insanity, have purchased a few hatching eggs. We have Cochin chicken and Pekin duck eggs. Today is day 1 in the incubators. The two eggs have different requirements, so we have to use 2 different incubators. One is ours, the other we borrowed from the school I work for. If we achieve a hatch, we may let classrooms adopt some babies. It’s only fair. We adopted one classroom’s duckling project last year.
After quite a bit of Googling, we know that chicken eggs require 60% humidity and a temp of 99.5º for 18 days, then we raise the humidity to 80% and stop turning them for the last 3 days, or until hatched. There are a couple of times the eggs are supposed to be checked for viability, so those will be big post days.
Wait…stop the presses. The directions on the incubator lead us to believe it’s possible to keep both eggs in the same incubator… Ok. Works for us. Add 6 Pekin duck eggs to the mix now, and we’ve got a much more full incubator.
If this works…I really want to raise pheasants to return to the wild here. Kind of a 50-50 thing. Free to come and go, but always welcome to come in. We’ll see. I tend to get “mother-ish” with the critters. LOL!
We have several varieties of hen chickens (roosters – no), two different breeds of ducks (a Rouen and what looks to be a runner-cross), but they’re both drakes. At one point we had 7 ducks, and all 7 were drakes. Someone explain the law of averages on that one, please! Rather than take my chances at the local feed store, or have to buy 25 straight run of any one breed, I bought a couple smaller clutches of eggs on eBay. We’ll see how well this works. It’s early enough in the season that I can buy from either the feed store, or any number of other sources.
We’ll keep you posted.