Back to the egg turning.

There is a rumor that one of my wonderful readers has some eggs that she is brooding. {Don't fret, I wasn't informed of this until after I posted the last entry} I thought it might be a good time to cover some basics so that she might not make the same mistakes as I, because that is the purpose of this blog.

As I said previously, egg turning is essential to the development of eggs, it needs to be done 5 times a day. This is something that I should have checked before making the decision to allow the left behind eggs to lay. If you don't have a faithful broody bird, you must turn them yourself 1/4th the way over 5 times a day. The odd number insures that the embryo isn't lying on the same side over night.

Be gentle when turning the egg as not to shock the embryo. For chicken eggs, stop turning them after the 18th day. For other types of eggs, stop turning 3 days before it's hatch date. After the 10th day, make sure that the large end of the egg is some what higher than the smaller side.

Make sure there is adequate ventilation so that the eggs can "breath". Do not store them in an air-conditioned room {if you bring them inside} It will dry them out. And the brooding temperature needs to be 99.75F. You might also think about placing a humidifier into the room with them to help keep them from losing too much moisture.

Here's an update from me;

I attempted to candle the eggs. Once again, I failed. I need to invest in a brighter flashlight.

pictured above; the left behind eggs.

Are you turning them?

I was asked if I was turning the eggs that my brother left behind. The answer is a yes, and no {ok, kind of} I turned them once a day. But after this question I felt the need to consult one of my books. They inform me that to keep a chick from disfiguring, I should be out there turning the eggs five times a day. Of course I am far from doing that, and expect {should they hatch} there will be a few one legged, no beaked, flat on one side of the body, chicks. Maybe the pure freak show nature of the chicken will bring in some extra money if I sold them to the goth kids. {Oh, I like goth kids, I was one back in the day. That makes me laugh, maybe I should warn them that before they are thirty, they will be living in the middle of no-where playing house wife and farm hand.}

I have been playing with the the idea of candling. I have yet to be successful with it, but it is another thing that I must try, try again if I ever want to be completely self sufficient. Out to the chicken coop I go, the darkness not complete, but it shouldn't hinder the candling process, for the books say nothing about how dark one's room should be when atempting such a thing. I must say that I do this at my own peril, for my goose does not like the odd visitor so early in the mornings. She has taken up resident in the whole of the bottom nest box. It should hold 6 chickens with ease, but every morning you are sure to be greeted with the warning honks of my African Grey gander, Gander { why yes, we are an imaginative bunch when it comes to naming} Goose had managed to run off my husband, but she is a smart one, and knows better than to bite {or in this case goose} the hand that feeds her.

Have I ventured to far from the subject of egg turning?

I believe I have mentioned before that modern hens have had there setting instincts bred out of them. Which is a shame. For now the independent grower/raiser must invest money into an incubator. Maybe leaving the eggs out was almost pure fantasy on my part. I knew/know the consequences of my rash actions. But there was hope there. A flicker of flame that was ready to jump trees should I have seen one hen sitting on the clutch. But a new nest has been created, one that lays precariously close to the unattended clutch of 28 eggs. The hens have shunned that area, and will not even lay new eggs there. I think this attempt of hatching out our own eggs is a complete failure. And something in my head {it's called my husband} says there is a conspiracy between the hatcheries and the manufacturers of the egg incubator. Why allow nature to run it's course, when you can spend money to allow a machine to mother your chicks? Have we become that lazy as to rub it off onto our livestock? {I have been reading way too many homesteading magazines, and their paranoia is starting to sink in}

Geese corner me one day while I was in the nursery.

Storms

Lightening evades the night

I realize that I have talked about the lack of windbreaks out here, but the subject of storms is looming just a county over right now. Maybe it's because my father is here from out of state, and seeing him brought back fond memories. He is the reason that I love storms. Growing up in suburbia, he use to go out side to watch the tornadoes pass as we huddled in a hallway or our neighbors bomb shelter. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? But when you spend your entire life with tornadoes every spring, it's part of life. Of course it is a dangerous but exciting thing to see.

cloud to ground lightening

My first tornado, that I was allowed to go outside and watch, was about 15 years go {it still feels weird that I am now at an age were can say that and I wasn't an infant.} This storm is now remembered as the Andover Tornado. But it didn't start there. It formed over the rodeo grounds in the suburb where I grew up. The sight was more than awe inspiring. I watched as it reached down and touched the ground, I could see homes shredded and it's lumber thrown about. Then something strange happened, it jumped into the big ditch. Suddenly the dirty black tornado was a bright white as it sucked up the water from the man-made river. We watched as it passed within a block of us and make it's way into Wichita. That's one thing I will never forget.

A forming storm

But what does all this nostalgia have to do with homesteading. Plenty I would say. The experience that my father gave me as a child prepared me for a life where the meteorologist won't break in during a program to tell you there is a tornado in your fields. Where you have to know the smell of coming rain, the yellow of the air before hail, and the eery silence that comes right before a tornado takes your home. We have this device called a weather alarm. It's helpful for night, but during the day, it's better to know the signs so you can take care of the things on the farm that needs to be tied down or bring the livestock in. You need to be able to tell if there is hail on the way before you venture out into a "frog strangler" to fix a fence.

With experience comes knowledge, and with knowledge {especially out here} comes the ability to save your own life.


If you have children interested in tornados, I recomend these two books

gather the eggs

I apologize for not posting in awhile. We had been away camping. One thing that I have learned about being away, is to double check that whoever is taking care of the chickens, knows to gather the eggs every day. I have about 20 eggs that I have to mark and leave. Maybe we will get some chicks out of it. More then likely we will just get a bunch of rotten eggs.


hard boiled eggs