I've written on a number of occasions about death on a homestead. This posting is about life and death, too.
The cost of chicks at the local farm suppliers has risen significantly over the past decade, so I decided to try incubating my hen's eggs to see if I can save some money and learn more about the hatching process. I acquired an incubator that not only keeps the eggs at the correct temperature, but also automatically turns the eggs. The incubator runs off common 110 ac, and it'll also run on 12 volts dc, so it can be used with my solar photovoltaic system, in a pinch.
So, about little three weeks ago, 10 eggs were placed in the incubator. After 21 days, I had one little guy burst through his shell and started strutting around. I patiently waited for additional eggs to hatch. After four extra days, the incubator was turned off and the remaining eggs were collected for a post-mortem.
I cracked open each egg to see what happened. Four of the eggs were not fertilized. Two of the eggs had some early development. Three of the eggs looked to be close to full term. It looks like my single rooster isn't capable of fully fertilizing 18 or so hens, so another rooster may be needed. I'm not sure what happened with eggs that were nearly full term.
The single chick seems to be healthy. Chickens are flock animals, and they can actually die of loneliness. In an effort to keep the little guy semi-happy, I've placed a mirror in his enclosure. He spends about 90% of his or her time in front of the mirror. I've also been playing youtube audio of chicks, and he seems to like it. I may let him cozy up to one of our guard dogs, once it gets a little bigger. So far, his development is comparable to all the other batches of chicks that I've had over the decades.
I'm going to start another batch of eggs this weekend. Hopefully, this batch will be more successful.