Sunday, August 22, 2010

Incubating eggs

Younger Daughter and her friend Miss Calamity found a small el-cheapo egg incubator we've had for years but never used.  We have two (possibly three) setting hens who may or may not successfully hatch chicks.  Nonetheless the girls decided they wanted to try out the incubator.

They found some fresh eggs and began setting it up.


Adding some water to the bottom to keep the humidity high.


All set up.  As I said, it's tiny and only holds three eggs.


The instructions that came with it are pretty comical.  These two country girls - well familiar with the Farm Facts of Life - got a huge kick out of reading the directions out loud to each other: "Chickens have fathers and mothers just as people do.  The father chickens are called roosters.  Mother chickens are called hens.  Eggs are laid by hens." "Before it can produce a baby chick, an egg must be fertile... In order to produce a fertile egg, a hen must have a husband."  Et cetera.

Speaking of chicken husbands, we'll test our rooster's libido by seeing if these eggs are fertile in three weeks.  Standby.

7 comments:

  1. That thing looks like a little spaceship from a 1950s scifi movie! Too cute!

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  2. I had a hen sitting on eggs the past month. She would not allow us to check on her. Even through the 100F degree days she sat there. You can not imagine my surprise when Saturday afternoon I heard the sound of young chicks peeping! We went out there and discovered that she had 6 of 8 eggs hatched! We moved her and the eggs and the youngsters to a old rabbit hutch for safety reasons. I didn't think it was possible for her to hatch any in this heat we had been having.

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  3. My FIL has one a little larger. About 18 eggs per clutch. I never realized how much young, and not so young, kids would love to have baby chicks in a box in the house.
    Lorenzo Poe

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  4. That's why I love agriculture...they even promote monogamy among livestock:).

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  5. The "Hen Husband" my neighbor has produces the silliest crow I've ever heard. Something between a puppy with the croup and a squashed cat. I wonder if his "wives" think it's sexy.

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  6. That's an old incubator. A new one would have instructions that included two mommies or two daddies and that it's OK to have a fertile egg without a father in the house...er, I mean...in the coop.

    Anonymous Patriot
    USA

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