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Randy, the one in the hatching video (posted at the bottom of this post), is the first chick to successfully hatch in the incubator. The other seven in this video were hatched by a hen.
Randy and siblings, in the coop at the house.
They will be moved to the farm very soon.
Randy is the cockerel standing on the piece of wood at the end of this video.
14 more chicks will be put in the coop in their place.
Since we began raising Silkies in May, we have slowly gravitated toward them as our exclusive chickens. They are easy to raise, the hens seem to make good mothers, and the Chinese (and others) apparently love this breed over all others to eat.
Recently, we brought two of these little guys from the farm, as we are keeping the larger chicks - a couple months old, up to full grown chickens, at the farm. In this case, I am very happy that we did. Most of the Silkies tend to shy away from us naturally. However, these two little guys have been like children ever since we got them to the house.
You can hold them indefinitely. They will stay in your hand as long as you let them. They love to be held and will chirp endlessly if put back in their box. Yep. Spoiled rotten already. Anyway, here are some photos of them from yesterday:
Our original "two day old chicks" purchased on the 25th of March, and our 41 additional chicks purchased five days later, are all now 70 days old, or 10 weeks, one day old.
One died from wrye neck. One was given away to a family member last week. So, we are now down to 59 birds of the original flock.
This flock is now on their 3rd sack of 30 kilos of maintainer feed, plus 1 sack of 30 kilos of grower feed, plus 5 kilos of grower feed on the day we bought the first 20 birds. So, all in all, they have consumed most all of that feed (the current sack has only been feeding them for two days), plus various fruits and veggies we have given them along the way.
The largest chickens are over 1.5 kilograms. The smallest are over 1.0 kilograms
Each full sack has cost us $18.75, plus $3.75 for the first 5 kilos. This comes to a total of $78.75, plus fruits and veggies in the amount of $22.00.
So, about $100.00 USD to raise 61 chickens to twelve weeks old. (Bear in mind, the current sack of feed will last almost two weeks.)
A friend (who shall remain nameless, unless he chooses to tell) has ordered, and shipped a new 300 egg incubator to me. He (and I) wants to see what I can do regarding incubating some fertilized eggs.
Anyway, I have calculated that, after one full month of incubating, we could incubate up to 500 eggs per month in this unit.
The incubator is fully automatic, including an automatic egg "turner". It doesn't really turn the eggs. It actually changes the angle of the (suspended) trays by a timed motor. You can set the interval at any time you wish. Typically, chicken eggs should be turned three to four times daily.
It also has UV lighting to help keep the air pure inside the incubator. Humidity is kept in check, and is generated by an open tank of water with a float valve and pump that fills the tank from an eternal resource.Three computer sized cooling fans run constantly, circulating the air throughout the incubator and over the water source.
After such a long trip, and a bit of cosmetic damage to the unit, I tested it for some time to make sure all functions were in proper working order. Check.
Below are some photos. If you look closely at the opened door views, you can see the egg "turner" in two positions: