We have hatching…

Over the last three weeks we’ve been monitoring the humidity and temperature of our homemade “Coolerbator” egg incubator. My last post was about counting our chickens before they’d hatched..

So far, our 15 mail order chicks have arrived and are thriving. Today our incubated eggs are cheeping & beginning to hatch!

The eggs have been on lockdown since friday because hatch day was supposed to be nearing but secretly in the back of our mind we hadn’t been counting on much to result… Mainly because this is our first attempt, also because four of the seven eggs (the blue & green ones) in the incubator were stored for about 2 weeks prior to incubating (which can really decrease hatch rate).

Plus, our homemade incubator isn’t the most air-tight temperature regulated thing right now. When I heard this faint “cheep, cheep!” coming from the dining area I was kind of amazed and pleasantly surprised. We weren’t in very high sprits this morning after someone dropped by to see us but the surprise cheeping turned moods around.

Things got going just a few hours ago… and between energy bursts the chick rests so it’s difficult to capture all the action but it seems we’ll probably have a new hatchling, possibly two if nothing has gone wrong between my day 18 candling and now.

8/10 6:50 p Update: We now have two eggs chirping! One is almost out, the other has yet to pip a hole but it’s talking!

8/11 Nothing exciting happen overnight, little chick just rested. The resting continued most of the morning, with small cheeping bursts in between.

Noon Update: The chick is pressing it’s self on the ends of the shell from the inside… It’s emerging from the shell now (and we got it on video!)

I’m waiting for the videos to upload so I can share them. Stay tuned 🙂