Hatching Chicks

Life on a homestead just isn't complete without baby chicks.  Our broody hens will start hatching out the little peepers come Springtime, but we decided to get a jump on things back in January by incubating some of our Lavender Orpington eggs.  Just before Valentine's Day we found ourselves with a fresh batch of Spring chicks!  Here's how it happened, from nest to brooder.
         This is a general description of the incubation process, for more specific details on how to properly incubate eggs, just google "how to incubate eggs"!

We have a variety of chickens in our coops, but when we want to hatch a certain breed, we separate out the hens and rooster of that breed, group them together, and gather the fertilized eggs for a few days.

This time we chose the Lavender Orpington eggs to incubate.  We placed the fertilized eggs in the automatic egg turner inside the preheated incubator.  We filled the humidity basins with water, closed the lid, and waited.

Three weeks later when we heard faint cheeping coming from inside the eggs, we took the eggs out of the turner and laid them on the mesh floor.  Over the next several hours, fifteen chicks made it out of the eggs and into the world.

The chicks needed to stay in the incubator for about a day to dry out and get their bearings.  Then we carefully placed them in a cardboard box so we could transport them to the brooder box.  Some chicks took longer to hatch, so we ended up doing this a few times.

The chicks were nice and fluffy when we moved them, but we had to move fast in order to keep them from getting cold.  Once out of the incubator, they were quickly run to the brooder in our lower room.  The box had been preheated and stocked with feed and water.

Our brooder is a square wooden box, with a hole in the top for a heat lamp, and peg board on the side for air circulation.   Once inside, the chicks quickly found the red water nipples and the feed trough, and they chattered excitedly as they explored their new digs.