2009 Incubator
That's our mighty rooster. He looks like a Brahma. He was one of the free ones the hatchery threw in to have enough warm bodies in our shipment of chicks last spring. Just a bit of luck. I am not much for fancy chickens, and when I saw his side stockings and I didn't think he was going to last long with us. But he has turned out to be a gentle rooster who does not harass the hens. He is a big bird, maybe twice the size of the hens with a pronounced large breast. We are hoping we have found a good eating chicken that we don't mind keeping.
This is our beat up old incubator, I think a little giant. We have a similar hovabator also, but the auto egg turner fits in this on. This one also has the fan unit that keeps the air moving around the incubator, helping to cut down temp variation in the incubator.
We bought all of it off eBay. No complaints. And that auto turner makes for much better results. Maybe the constant turning is better, maybe not opening the incubator keeps the humidity / temp more constant. I like it, though.
Today was the final day of egg collection. Not quite enough eggs to fill the racks, but I didn't want my collected eggs to age out. We didn't have the best storage temp, a little on the cold side. I hope it doesn't destroy our hatch. We stored the eggs in our cold room and with the cold temps outside, we got well below the 56' optimum storage temp.
Given that, I think I am going to hold off slaughtering the rooster until we see the results of this hatch.
posted by MMP at
5:08 AM
3 Comments:
A lovely rooseter!
I want to learn about chickens and roosters and incubators. Thanks for writing. And welcome back!
By
Anonymous, at 7:30 PM
Why don't you like the feathered feet? I'm actually thinking of culling out anyone who doesn't have them. They are better for cold weather especially when they have the pea combs also (I think those two features generally go together). He is very beautiful.
By
Anonymous, at 5:32 PM
I don't have a 'thing' about sidestockings, they are just different than our norm. I suppose they might help with cold temps, but our non-sidestocking chickens don't seem to fair any worse in the cold weather (we had a week plus of twenty below this winter). So I am not sure the sidestockings are an advantage for us.
A shorter comb and less wattles would be good. Big chicken did get obvious frost bite on his comb this year even though he wasn't going outside. But I think the secret is eating him earlier in the winter. We didn't end up eating him until March, much later than I intended.
By
MMP, at 11:28 AM
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