‘ve been wanting to build a larger incubator for some time. When Lilian and I built our incubator last year, we put a post out on freecycle.com asking for a free ice chest or small fridge. We got the Omaha Steaks ice chest and a larger dorm fridge for free. We ended up using the smaller ice chest for our first incubator. The fridge has been sitting in our shop for the last year just collecting dust (something I’m learning on the farm is to not throw away everything, a lot of stuff will come in handy again).
About a month ago we were at the feed store buying quail food. There was a woman there that approached Julia. She runs a poultry coop of farmers from around the valley that raise all kinds of poultry. Chickens, geese, turkeys, ducks, etc. She had been looking to get in to quail, and asked us if we would like to join their coop and become their supplier for quail. We said we would. We will now be selling quail eggs and incubating quail and selling them through Oregon Cooperative Hatchery (I think that’s the name).
So, since we were going to be needing to incubate more than just one group of eggs at a time, we needed a larger incubator. I would like to buy one (here’s the one I want to buy if anybody is looking for a father’s day gift!!! Dickey’s Incubators, the 2X2 one would be nice!!) I decided to finally build one out of the fridge I’ve had in the shop. I’ve had the wafer thermometer and heating element for some time now, so all I needed to do was put everything together.
It took a couple of nights but it is now working and I’m trying to get it stabilized at 99.5. I had an old computer that didn’t work so I took one of the fans out and I am using the fan from there.
Here’s the fridge.
It’s not pretty but it’s solid. I took out all the workings but left the electrical hooked up.
I have the fan and heating element up where the freezer was
Since the fan doesn’t run on regular electricity, you can see the small black cord running from the top of the fan outside. On the outside of the refridgerator I put an electrical box. In this box I put a live plug, and a switch. The switch will turn on the heating element.
You can see the fan plugged in here.
The switch give power to the thermostat and that runs the heating element. Here’s a shot of the inside of the fridge:
As you can see I still haven’t cleaned up the wires (wanted to make sure it worked and all) but it is working (too well, it was up to 106°).
Now I couldn’t just put the eggs on the shelf, I needed something to put the eggs in, so I built a box last night that holds about 130 eggs.
This box will sit on the shelf, and I’ll tip the box left and right so the eggs will be moved easily. Looking forward to trying it out this weekend!
It is December 31, 2009, time to look at our 2009 Farm Goals. We did complete some and didn’t
I’ll start with the 2009 Farm Goals: = COMPLETED = Started but not completed =No work done yet.
Put in a Garden – We had a great garden this year. The corn was delicious, the tomatoes did great, we had TOOOO much squash, we loved it. We have a lot of it canned in the pantry, and had some great veggies this summer. We have already started planning next years garden!
Build Layer Chicken Coop – We’re getting about 8 eggs a day now. LOVE IT!!!
Build Chicken Tractors – We built 2 chicken tractors and did almost 50 Cornish X on pasture and 4 turkeys. We have about 20 chickens still in the freezer and we canned a lot of the turkey and have many meals ready to go!
Attend/Enter 3 Alpaca Shows – Well, we didn’t go to any.
Visit 3 Fiber Mills – We didn’t go to any, maybe next year.
Neonatal Class
Get a Tractor – Yeah right! LOL
Build a Whizbang Garden Cart & Plucker – Well, we have the wood for the garden cart. I have started with some very handy friends getting what we need for the plucker. I’m sure with the help of Dan we’ll get this done soon!
Build Road to Back Pasture - Well, nope!
Run Water To Barn – Maybe this next year!!
Make Compost Bins –
Farm Days – Our farm day in September was wonderful. We had a lot of people stop by and had a great time. The news stopped by and we even made the 6:00 and 11:00 news!
Build a Fire Pit
Build a Skirting Table
Start a Monthly Movie Night- We’ve done pretty well with having a family movie night each month. It helped when we started getting Netflix!
CHICKEN & QUAIL UPDATE:
Our chickens are doing great. We have 8 laying hens & 3 three month olds out with Millie our rooster. We have 10 two month old chickens that we hatched out and 7 more chickens that just hatched out yesterday and today. So that gives us 29 chickens at this point.
We also started on quail this year. We have 6 laying hens with 2 male quail. We also have 13 three week old quail that are just about to start laying here in 2-3 weeks. That gives us 21 quail. We hope to start breeding and raising quail for meet.
ALPACA UPDATE:
We have 23 alpaca on property. 2 of them are being agisted here for our good friend Kim. We are so happy to have Brownie & Atom here with us. We also have 2 that will be leaving this week for their new home, Rogue and Zach. They were purchased by a great couple from Eugene a couple of months ago.
The rest of the alpacas are doing great. We had 5 babies this summer and we are looking forward to another great year. Thank you to all of our friends for the support they have given us this year. Look for our 2010 goals in just a few days!
Just thought I would share the three quail eggs that we got today. We are getting between 2-3 quail eggs a day. 2 of them are usually the same, and then we get a different colored one.
Well today, we had 3 very different eggs. One very tiny egg, one normal sized green egg and one large egg. All beautiful!!
We are starting to get eggs FROM MORE THAN JUST GOLDIE!!
We have been getting eggs from Goldie for most of the summer (except when she went broody, but that’s another boring story!) About 2 days ago we went out and found that our quail have now started laying eggs! Quail eggs are so small and cute!!!
Well, today I go out, and we have 2 chicken eggs!! I think, did I get Goldie’s egg from yesterday? YES!! Then I look closer at the 2 eggs, one is much smaller than the other! I am guessing that Dottie, our Silver Laced Wyandotte is laying eggs now! That means Wellie (our Wellsummer) isn’t far behind!!) Here are the 2 eggs for size comparison!
BEAUTIFUL!! Well, how do I know that it isn’t Wellie’s egg? Well, hers will be dark brown, not light brown. So I’m pretty sure it’s Dotties.
We got our first egg yesterday! I called home last night as I was walking to my car at work to talk to Julila. Lilian answered the phone and asked if I had put an egg in with the chickens. I told her I hadn’t that it must be our first egg! I havn’t been that excited in a long time. We had our first egg!!
When I got home Lilian was waiting for me in the backyard and we went out to the coop together to see the egg (she was sweet to leave it there for me). Here is what we saw!
There it was just sitting right in the middle of the 2nd nest box. That morning when I had checked on the chickens I had noticed that that box had been set in the night before but there was nothing there. But there it is now!!
Here is Lilian holding it so you can see the size and then next to a quarter.
So now we have to figure out what to do with our first egg. We might fry it up tonight and all have a bite!
Ok, it’s been a little while (a week) since I gave an update, and it’s been even longer since I gave an update on the chickens so I thought it was time to give an overall farm update!
I’ll start with the 2009 Farm Goals: = COMPLETED = Started but not completed =No work done yet.
Put in a Garden – The garden has been tilled. When Julia was in Orlando for a TSFL conference, I had a local farmer come over with his small tractor and till up the garden. It would have taken me ALL DAY to do it with a walk behind kind, it took him just a few minutes. No pictures at this time but I’m sure you know what dirt looks like!!!
Build Layer Chicken Coop - The layer coop is mostly done. It has walls, windows, doors, roosts, nest boxes, lights, and chickens. All that needs to be done to really finish it off is to put access doors on the back of the nest boxes so we won’t have to go in to the coop to collect eggs. Here are some pictures:
This first one is of the simple roosts that I built out of 2×4’s. I also had some leftover metal shelving that I hooked some large limbs to. The chickens really like the limbs.
Here are the nest boxes I built. Right now I have the 4 upper ones. On the middle shelf I am going to have a community nest box. There will be an opening at each end, and the chickens will be able to go in and lay eggs where they want.
Here are a couple of pictures of the chickens enjoying (except for me taking pictures of them) the limbs in the coop.
Build Chicken Tractors
Attend/Enter 3 Alpaca Shows – Just found out that the Alpaca show in Eugene is canceled this year. So we’ll have to find some more to go to!
Visit 3 Fiber Mills
Neonatal Class – We did attend the neonatal class at Northwest Alpacas. It was a good day and we did learn a lot. We now feel a little bit more prepared for our 4 cria this summer.
Get a Tractor – Yeah right! LOL
Build a Whizbang Garden Cart & Plucker – I’ve started collecting the wood I’ll need for this. Next thing I need to do is start getting the hardware.
Build Road to Back Pasture
Run Water To Barn
Make Compost Bins – We have a location and a lot of stuff to compost. Now we just need to put it all together.
Farm Days – We have dates!!! The first one is going to be June 27. This is just our Farm Day. The National Alpaca Farm day is going to be September 26th. We’re looking forward to these days!
Build a Fire Pit
Build a Skirting Table
Start a Monthly Movie Night- January & February Movie Nights went great. This has been harder than I thought it was going to be. We did have movie nights in March, April & May, but not all the kids were present at all nights, and we didn’t have friends at all nights but we did watch movies!!
CHICKEN UPDATE:
Well, at one point we had A LOT of chickens here on property. At one point we had 3 RIR, 3 Barred Rocks, 3 Welsummers, 3 Speckled Sussex, 3 Silver Laced Wyandottes, 1 Golden Laced Wyandotte, 6 Buff Orpingtons, 1 Cuckoo Maran, 1 Dominique, 1 Lemon Blue Game Bantam, 1 Barnyard Mutt. 26 chickens & 4 turkeys! I finally realized that we had too many. So I either gave away or sold a good number of chickens. At this point we have: 1 Barred Rock, 1 Speckled Sussex, 1 GLW, 1 SLW, 1 Welsummer, 1 Dominque & the Barnyard mutt. We also still have all the Buff Orps and the Cuckoo Maran & the 4 turkeys. Also in the incubator we have 15 eggs, so there is still a chance we’ll have TOO MANY chickens!!
We have named most of our chickens (except for the BO’s).
Goldie is our Golden Laced Wyandotte
Millie is our Dominique
Whitey is our barnyard mutt
Uncle Sam is the Barred Rock in back and Madge is the Speckled Sussex in front.
Wellie is our Welsummer
And Dott is our Silver Laced Wyandotte.
Like I said, we also have 6 Buff Orpingtons (no names yet) and one Cuckoo Maran. They are about 2 weeks old right now and are doing pretty good.
We also have 15 eggs in the incubator. 7 of them are Black Australorps. These will grow up to be beautiful irredescent black (large) chickens.
Image from Meyer Hatchery
The other 8 are Ameraucanas. I’m not sure what color they are going to be (there are multiple colors) but they will lay beautiful blue eggs. Here are some pictures from today!
We’re on day 18 with these, so no turning, and only a couple days left until they hatch!!
ALPACA UPDATE
All in all the alpacas have been doing great. No real issues with them. They are growing up wonderfully and getting along like they should. Like my last post said, we were getting ready for shearing day. It went great!!! We all had our jobs and we did them well, and we got them all sheared!
I was out getting ready for the day aroun 7:30. Kim (Brownie’s owner) showed up at 8:00 and started helping us get ready. We layed out plywood where we would be shearing and got the barn as clean as you can get a barn.
Eddie showed up right at 9:00 and started setting up his equipment (ropes & clippers). To shear the alpacas, we bring them in and lay them down on their side and then tie their feet and stretch them out so they can’t hurt themselves or us! All in all they are probably down for no more then 4-5 minutes. Most of them didn’t make much of a fuss.
Here is a picture of what it looked like just before we started. You can see the ropes stretched out ready to go. In the picture is Eddie the shearer, Kim, and Julia’s dad Terry filming.
So our jobs were as follows: Rebecca and I had the job of bringing in the alpacas, laying them down and tying them down. Georgia was in charge of sweeping between the alpacas and helping Bec and I separate the alpacas out and keep the others where they needed to go (she was a GREAT help!!!). Kim was in charge of helping Eddie with shearing and keeping the head where it needed to be during shearing. Robbin from Bailey Hill Alpacas was helping bag up the fiber. She was in charge of 2nds (fiber from the chest, belly, legs & neck). Julia was bagging up the blanket and clipping toenails while we had them down. Pattie was in charge of keeping all the bags and lables in order so we would know whos fiber was whos when we finished. Lilian was in charge of watching the kids in the house so we could all be out in the barn. She was also a great help! Without Georgia & Lilian, we could have never done this day so quickly!!
Here is a picture mid-shear! Over on the far side you can see them shearing Nola. Julia had just collected the blanket and Kim is holding the head while Eddie finishes up. Here close to the camera you can see Bec and I tying down Helena while Georgia brings us the ropes. (This was the only picture I got during shearing. I thought I had my camera to take one picture every 30 seconds, but it was really set to take one picture every 60 minutes. Next year I’ll get it set right!! Stupid camera!!)
This is the aftermath of shearing.
All in all it only took us about 75 minutes to shear all 16 alpacas. Pretty good for first timers! Julia and her mom had made a great lunch for all of us and we all went in and enjoyed a fun lunch, getting to know Eddie better and laughing about getting spit on or kicked (only Bec and I got kicked, so not too bad). I think we all had some sort of spit on us!
Here is what we are left with, 32 bags of beautiful fiber (only 30 bags are shown, Kim took Brownies fiber with her). I love all the different colors. One bag has their blanket and another bag with 2nds. We also collected a small sample to send off to get histograms (this will tell us the thickness of the fiber, the length, and all the fun stuff we want to know).
Terry was able to get some video. It didn’t upload that well, but here you can see I think Feline getting sheared.
We all had a great day. We’re looking forward to next year.
So, all in all we are having a great time on the farm! Keep watching for the update on the eggs that are getting ready to hatch!!
Well, about 3 weeks ago Lilian and I built our first incubator. We really didn’t have much of an idea of what we were doing, but thought we’d try it anyway. We were hopeful about getting baby chicks, but I think both of us in the back of our minds thought we would get a 100% hatch (100% NOT hatching that is!!) Well last night the girls came running in after family prayer to let us know that they could hear the chicks and one of the eggs is breaking open!! We all ran in there and saw this!
WOO HOO!!! That is a chick trying to get out! Aislyn didn’t want to go to bed, she wanted to stay up all night and watch it. I’m glad we didn’t let her. I woke up this morning around 5:45 and the egg was only a little bit more broken, but not much. My heart sank, I thought that we had lost it. I went and got ready for the morning and came back out around 6:15 and saw this:
OK, that is SOO COOL!!! I quickly woke up the girls to come watch (I think Aislyn got up even quicker than she does on Christmas morning!!!) We got to watch a baby chick hatch!! That was so fun!!
She (I hope a she) is soo small. She is about 1/2 the size of our other baby chicks when we first got them (and now she is about 1/5 the size that they are now!!!) She is walking around the incubator checking out the other eggs and waiting for others to hatch.
We have 3 more eggs hatching this morning!! One more bantam egg, one blue Easter Egger egg and one of the brown eggs (can’t tell if it is one of the pure BO’s or a mix).
So by the time I get home from work, we might have 3 more chicks!! I’ll update this evening with more pictures!!
Yesterday the eggs were delivered by the USPS around 9:00 a.m. Julia opened the box and took them out and so they could rest from the long trip and come to room temperature. Once I got home, Lilian and I opened them all up. They were individually wrapped so it took a little time. Once we got them opened, we were excited to see what we had!!
The woman we had bought them from had sent us 4 extra eggs so we have even a better chance to get maybe one chick!!
Here is what we have:
2 Pure Buff Orpingtons (front 2 eggs in the back left container)
2 Easter Eggers (back 2 eggs in the back right container) Hard to tell in the picture but they are a beautiful blue!!
3 Lemon Blue Bantam (small eggs in front container)
9 Mutt (mixed flock from many different varieties)
This is to compare our largest egg and our smallest.
Here they are in the incubator! Ready to go!!
We just had to watch them for a while!!
Even with the lights off!
So, today (Friday) is day 1. They should start hatching around day 20-21. So, we’re looking at chicks around March 12 or so!!
Julia emailed me today and said our eggs have arrived! We’ll let them sit tonight and then put them in the incubator either tonight or early tomorrow morning.
If all works out well, we’ll have chicks on about March 12th!
I have ordered our first eggs to try in our incubator. I went to Eggbid.com (yes, there is an auction site for EVERYTHING you would ever want) and placed a bid for 12 eggs. They are a mix of purebred and mutt eggs so I was able to get the fairly cheap. They are rebuilding their coops so all their chickens are together. They have: Araucanas, Barred Plymouth Rock, White Rock, Black Australorps, Black Sex Link, Black Giants, Buff Orpingtons, Comets , Wyandottes, New Hamps Reds ,Partridge Rocks, Standard Cochins. So I’ll get a mixture of these chickens. All of them would be a great addition to our flock.
I was able to get them for $4.99 plus shipping. They should get here this weekend so we now have to get the incubator finished!!
‘ve been wanting to build a larger incubator for some time. When Lilian and I built our incubator last year, we put a post out on freecycle.com asking for a free ice chest or small fridge. We got the Omaha Steaks ice chest and a larger dorm fridge for free. We ended up using the smaller ice chest for our first incubator. The fridge has been sitting in our shop for the last year just collecting dust (something I’m learning on the farm is to not throw away everything, a lot of stuff will come in handy again).
= COMPLETED
= Started but not completed
=No work done yet.
We had our first egg!!
Next year I’ll get it set right!! Stupid camera!!)
