Thursday 23 May 2013

A chick by any other name is still cute as hell... (continued)

Part Deux:


The winning chicken breeds are as follows: (mostly bought for egg colour)
  • White Chantacler - Canadian breed, winter hardy, our only white chickens.
  • Black Copper Marans - Good breed from Europe, super dark brown/red eggs. 
  • Amaracauna - Couple different colourings of this breed, but all lay blue eggs.
  • Malines - Suppose to be a great tasting bird, bought mostly on a whim. 
  • Euskal Oiloa - Super friendly bird, there for the kids and wife to play with. 
  • Mystery Green and Blue Egg layers (aka Easter Eggers)- lays blue or green eggs.
  • Olive Layers - Lays dark green egg. 
So what did I take away from this experience?
  1. It's a good move to set up presales unless you are getting there at 4am like a lunatic. Frankly I don't know what I may have missed due to people selling out early and high tailing out of there.
  2. Look closely at what you buy and ensure freshness.
  3. Many of the people at these swaps shouldn't be breeding with each other never mind eggs. Buyer beware, go with your gut.
  4. The swaps happen both in spring and fall, but if nothing else you can set up connections to get eggs off the swap circuit. 
  5. Park far away for a quick exit. Some looked like they got boxed in until 3 people moved their trucks. 
  6. Bring llama treats.   
Egg army ready for world domination

 Step 3: Time to turn up the heat...


A couple days prior to the swap I fired up the incubator to get it set to the right temp to hit the ground running. I'm glad I did because it took a couple days to get things just right. 99 deg is what the goal temp is with a humidity of about 60-65 percent. An impossible calculation if you don't have the right instruments.

We set it up in the office on the floor where the temperature stays stable and there are no breezes. Ultimately I should have put it on a desk but paranoia initially started it on the floor and it stayed there. As soon as I got home, I put the eggs into the office for a couple hours to settle at room temp and started to decide which eggs won't make the cut. 48 eggs and 41 spaces, really the turner holds 42 but one of the spots looked a little dangerously close to turner motor so we left it at 41. The choice was decided based on cost of eggs, colour of eggs and purity of the breed. We ended up posting an ad on craigslist to give away the others to a nice hippie woman. If she was wearing a tank there'd be armpit hair for sure, but none the less she was nice and promised to slip us a couple chicks in the future if we want it. I didnt have the heart to just toss them. I'm a softy like that...

So the winning eggs are in their spots, turner is plugged in and the temps are all right. There's no going back now, and with a total investment of 200$ we're in good shape. For the next 18 days tho, it's a case of hurry up and wait. Over the next 2 and a half weeks it was uneventful except for a power outage which happened while I was an hour away. D's mother called me up all frantic about the power knowing what it meant to the chicks. I was too far and had to call a buddy to swing by the house to make sure it wasn't a breaker and to possibly transport the chicks to an electrical source. If the temperature goes too far above or below 99 deg for too long, you can kiss your eggs goodbye. After all that work it would have been a bad scene if we lost them. Luckily it was short lived and the heat wasn't off for very long. 

On the 18th day it time to get the eggs into lock down for the next 3 days. At day 18 you:
  1. Remove eggs from turner and remove turner from incubator
  2. Replace eggs on their sides with small end pointing kinda downward. 
  3. Raise humidity to 75% by filling most or all of the water traps the incubator has.
  4. Try to make eggs not touch one another, which was hard with 41 eggs. 
  5. Replace lid to incubator and don't touch it for 3 days. I ended up having to add water once or twice but I found a way with a straw to feed water through a vent hole.
At the end of the 2nd of 3 days we had a couple eggs wobbling back n forth periodically and eventually our first 'pip' (a small break in the eggs caused by the chicks beak) It was a great site to see considering I assumed something messed up along the way and we'd have maybe 1 hatch. I'd be happy if 5 made it honestly. Your instinct is to help but for so many reasons you can't. A few hours later (midnight) while doing a quick check we had our first hatch. I was excited and woke D with a quick iPhone pic of it, she was dazed but happy. (99% of pics on this blog are all iPhone) D woke me the next morning on her way to work to let me know 3 more had hatched. More revenge than information I'd guess....

I must admit I spent more time than I'm proud of bent over the incubator talking to the eggs encouragingly and tapping the outside. Midway through that day we had 10 chicks and by dinner time we had 15. This is where things started getting tricky and there are 2 schools of thought here regarding the lockdown period. Some say you can't open it no matter what for 3 days, after that period there may be more over the next day or two but most likely your set. Others say it's ok to open the lid quickly to do what you need to and get out. It's tricky because at 15 chicks hatched the incubator started getting a little crowded. Some at this point are now dry, which takes a few hours. Some are still wet and meandering around drunkenly and some are in partway through hatching in varying degrees. Chicks can stay in an incubator for 48 hrs+ feeding off an internal yoke sack so they don't have to be rushed out. The hatched ones are bumping around and knocking not only each other but the eggs around them and causing what I deem to be 'problems'.

I went with the school of get in and get out, but make sure the temp and humidity get back up quickly. A couple times I popped open the lid and grabbed out the dry chicks. In retrospect it may have not been a good move, but the number of chicks I had in there warranted it. It's not unlike when you know your dryer can fit 10 towels but when there's 7 it does a better job. The hatching chicks are fighting the shell, but more importantly, the membrane holding them in, and when that dries out, they're in trouble. There were a couple cases of chicks stuck in their shells, some made it, some didn't. There is a tang of guilt as to whether better planning would have avoided that.
Our new watchdogs: Thor and Whitey
 
In the end, we had 28 of 41 eggs hatch, 2 had passed away midway through coming out, and the rest stayed as coloured eggs silently yearning to chase bugs. We lost one a couple days later which was one I ended up trying to help finish hatching but obviously shouldn't have. Mother nature has a way to pick the ones that should make it, but did my messing with the lid cause this or any others to not hatch?

What I'd do next time:
  • Start with less eggs. 41 made it too crowded, maybe at 25-30 there'd me more room for patience.  
  • Not open the lid til the eggs were basically done hatching.
  • If you do feel it necessary to intervene, just have a little sugar water there to feed the little beaks for a burst of energy. 
  • Prepare not only for a little heartache but the unusual smell as well... wish the office had a little more circulation.
  • Once the lockdown starts, don't block any vent holes trying to conserve humidity. 
  • Make sure you have backup plans for a power outage situation. 
After all the dust settled and we cleaned the gear I have to say it was a great experience. We learned a lot and ended up with more then we expected and they all seem healthy. In fact I would do it again, probably next year. It is one of those moments you feel all warm inside and really feel, even for a moment, like we are legitimate farmers. But most of all, I can't wait to share this with our kids.

Now all that's left is figuring out which is which. They mixed together as they hatched and not only do I not know male from female but the game to figure out the breeds is on now too. I'm going to post some picks on the chicken sites and hope they can help, they always do...

Life Lesson # 922 - Don't count your eggs before they are hatched. This is true literally and figuratively...

 








               








A chick by any other name is still cute as hell...




If someone told me 20 years ago that one day I'd gladly be spending the first long weekend of the summer huddled over a bunch of incubating eggs, I would have punched him. However, that is exactly what happened, and that Bizzarro like change of events began not too long ago... (cue flashback special effects)

One of the things D and I discussed when we first decided to make the jump to the green acres lifestyle was raising chickens. As always I thought big, at that point in time I assured her it would be about 10 chickens in a small coop. A general rule I've learned in our short marriage is this: In any marriage, to psych your significant other up for something, you half it at first and then let it grow organically. So once the seed was planted for that one, I set to reading my plethora of books on the subject and joined a couple websites.
  1. A great one for our geographic location was Poultry Swap Ontario 
  2. A very informative yet USA based site Backyard Chickens     
 As usual it's mostly about the message boards whose members are very educated and more than helpful with information, even if it has been asked a hundred times already. The Backyard Chickens site even has a little education section for all the basics. Priceless.

The original plan was to purchase a few day old chicks from a couple places and get them into a brooder, then out to a mansion like coop to start laying. At some point along the road, about 2 months ago, I had the eureka to hatch our own eggs. As mentioned in the last episode, it was about price/chick, health of the chick, the variety available, and of course the experience. If we are doing this, let jump in with both feet. Little did I know...

Step 1 - A Cook is limited by his gear!


Incubator hard at work
So the first step is to buy an incubator. Gotta have some place to cook these little devils and get them out into the world. There are various places to buy them and various suppliers of anything from a desktop model to one the size of a fridge which does 1000 eggs. We settled on the Hovabator basic model from a guy on Ebay. (A family member was visiting the USA so we had it shipped there and they brought it back. Saving shipping and customs) It holds up to 42 eggs and you can get some basic extras for it to make life a lot easier. These extras made all the difference so if you are planning on giving the egg hatching a try, trust me on this one.

The entire package cost us about 120$ US and included:
  • The Incubator - Hovabator basic model, mostly Styrofoam and a footprint equal to a laptop.  
  • A Digital Thermometer/Hydrometer: Very important extra because the included thermometer is about as lame as extras get, and the moisture meter aspect is key for maintaining humidity at different levels.  
  • An Egg Turner: The most import extra you can get for this endeavour. Normally, for those who are crazy, you literally have to turn the egg over 3 times a day for 18 days to ensure the eggs hatch properly. Something to do with preventing sticking to the egg. They have a whole system of marking each side with an X or O and that keeps track. The egg turner does it all for you. Put the eggs in small end down, plug it in and walk away...  
  •  A Computer Fan: You hard wire and attach it inside the incubator to keep air circulating. (takes 5 mins) Keeps temps even and help to dry off the chicks once they hatch.
This combination is all we needed to turn our place into a hatchapalooza festival. Oh, but first we have to get the eggs...

Step 2 -  Gotta fill'em with something...


If you visit either of the aforementioned websites they have sales areas for people to buy and sell various types of poultry: eggs, chicks, full grown layers/roosters, ducks and even geese or pheasants. It was here while poking around I found out about a 'Fir and Fowl' swap happening out in ultra-farmland a couple weeks from then. I would have been able to get eggs (craigslist, chicken sites) here and there from different places, with me driving back and forth or, I could head to one place and get a large variety from all over the area.

At first the idea was to just head out to this little town and probably see like 15 or 20 pickup trucks with chickens at various stages. Like a mini farmer tailgate party where they sell live chickens not cooked ones. Anyway, before heading up I thought it might be a good move to have some sales prebooked to pick up there. I sent messages to a few people on the site and had it set to hold them for us to pickup. It was a very nice thing for these people to do considering I may not show/be lost or any number of things which would leave them with eggs unsold.

Again, things got a little out of hand and I ended up pre-booking basically all the free spots I had eggs for. Actually, we were only going for about 10 chickens so we are way over the top now. I justified it to myself by thinking, 'ok, usually they say you get about 75-80% hatch rate (less for us being newbies) and from that, if we're lucky, 50% of those will be roosters (which you only need 1 or 2 of). So once everything washes out we'll maybe lose a couple to the circle of life and we'll be just about right. We also can trade/sell and/or eat any extras we have. The problem being, it'll stop us being able to pickup new eggs there unless I wanted to try to sell or toss any overage. In the end I was glad I did pre-book.    

I started reading that people begin poking around at like 4 am at this swap with flashlights. These are the hardcore chicken heads who are coming for something specific or rare. As it turned out the place for the swap was 2 hours from our house, so there is no way I was making it that early and frankly we decided that I should go solo, which I am also just as happy to do. I'll be the first to admit I'm a bad person to shop with and finding/meandering around a place I've never been to, could frustrate anyone with me. I'll circle a place a couple times just to take it all in, and then zig zag back and forth getting the best of what we need. Sometimes changing my mind and going back for something else. Even worse I'll just stand at a busy table for a while, looking at the merchandise and people watching.

Poultry Flea Market / DNA Boggle capital
So I leave at 6 am and most people I'm meeting are expecting me about 9. I've got time to get lost or doddle if I want, scope out the competition and see if anything else of higher interest is available. The ride is uneventful and when I pull into the small town the swap was easy to find. When I say it was packed to the brim with people and trucks, it would be an understatement. It was a standard football field and racetrack at a high school, with trucks of all sizes side by side around both sides of the track, plus any other place where a truck could park, there was one. Even the parking lots were full with sellers. I had to park almost a km away, and was happy I wasn't getting anything big. Carrying a couple boxes of fragile eggs was bad enough.

They sold every kind of feathered foul you can think of, eggs and live ones. Plus they had snakes, pigs, puppies and I think I saw a llama. Few chicken waterers and accessories here and there, nothing mind shattering. However there were tons of people, and in some spots it was shoulder to shoulder. In the middle of nowhere? This swap probably quadruples the towns population for a few hours. The point of this story is that all the good eggs we would want to get our hands on were nowhere to be found. Many signs with crossed out listings peppered the lane ways and by 9am the stuff was basically gonzo. Hence why we read people are snooping around at 4 am.

Regardless, we had our sales set up and the transactions went smooth enough. One person was a sweet woman from the far south west and she traded me a dozen eggs for some seeds I had brought with me. (Thanks seed swap) The only negative I would take with me was one of the sellers eggs were a little different colour than his listing pics, and his eggs were a little dated. Not to mention they were expensive. As a rule you want your eggs to be 7 days or younger for maximum hatching. A couple of his were hitting the 7 day mark but I didn't notice it till I got back home. (he penciled the date they were laid on them) I ended up getting out of there about 12:30 with 48 eggs in hand and a big bag of pine shavings I know we'd need at some point. I could have gotten more things but this trip was as much recon as anything.


To be continued....

Tuesday 7 May 2013

Life's just an hourglass glued to a table...

I cant believe how quickly time passed this last month. Everyday I think about this blog and then a nano second later I'm deflected onto one of the plethora of tasks left to do. I miss the days of condo living a little, but that too disappears a nano second later.

Meanwhile back at the farm... the in-law suite is basically completed and by that I mean it's barely livable. Floors are down, half of the trim is done, walls are painted but waiting for final coat. The kitchen cabs are in but no counter top and the bathroom has nothing but tile floor, a shower base and a toilet which I am convinced is leaking a little into an open space above the garage I can't get my eyes onto. D's mom moved in 4 days ago and has been very nice about the whole thing and she's using our facilities until I'm done. She's almost walked in on me changing twice, which I'm not sure was all accident... she's french so you never know. The fact is it will be done within a couple days, except for the granite counter on order but I'll toss in a temp one and then bolt the door on our side... with 4 locks...

I completed the seeding room in the garage. It ended up being a 6 x 12 room which I insulated and boarded with OSB board inside for mounting things and drywall outside for insulation and aesthetics. There are supports for hanging 6 adjustable lighting systems and waist high tables surrounding the whole area. (I'm 6'1" so my waist is not the same as most) Currently there are 150  2 week old tomato/pepper seedlings growing at a toasty 70-75 degrees and all seems to be going well. The details on this will follow soon in another edition of Jack of all Trades...

The chicken factory has taken an unexpected turn. Another late night ill fated eureka of mine now has us hatching our own eggs rather then buying day old chicks as previously planned. Not 100% sure this was a good plan, but after my mom picked us up a package while on vacation in Florida, we now are proud owners of our very own incubator. Retrospectively the reasoning is this:
  1. Hatching eggs cost considerably less than a chick. 
  2. You never know what cooties or critters a day/week old chick may have.
  3. It's easier to get your hands on eggs vs chicks unless the farmer lives close. You can't ship a chick for the most part.
  4. The variety available of hatching eggs seems to be higher, if that makes sense. 
  5. The idea of watching eggs hatch seemed intriguing. We'll be exposed to enough death on the farm I'm sure so watching the start of life seemed like a nice trade off.
  6. Having time to hatch the eggs, gives me time to finish the coop and baby chick pen.     
 We're heading to a chicken swap next weekend in the middle of red neck Ontario. After getting my head hooked on going, I realized it was 2 hours away and started at 6 am, but the tunnel vision has got me so away I go. Pretty sure D will bail last minute, which is ok, I prefer shopping solo. To make sure we don't come home empty handed I have a few farmers bringing us some hatching eggs. We will shop around there, get a handful of other varieties and then run for the border before the banjos begin and a huge guy asks me if I can squeal like a pig...  this also is a 'to be continued'... 

Life Lesson #199 - Make sure at the end of your life you look back thinking "I'm glad I did" and not "I wish I had"