‘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!
At the chicken swap a few weeks ago, Lilian talked me in to getting some quail eggs. We put them in the incubator, and they started hatching today. As of right now we have 6 quail that have hatched. There are 4 more that are pipping, and getting ready to hatch. Quail eggs are VERY small, that makes the babies very small as well!!
They are very cute! I’m looking forward to trying the eggs, and maybe raising them for meat. They should start laying eggs in about 4-5 weeks.
About 3 weeks ago I put our final eggs in our incubator. Seven Black Australorps & eight Ameraucanas. They started piping last night and this morning we had 5 that had hatched. By the time I had gotten home from work we had 3 more for a total of 8 new chicks.
Here are the 8 all together:
You’ll notice that one of them does not look like any of the others. The blond one doesn’t look like either the Australorps (the black ones) or the Ameraucanas (browner ones). I emailed the woman I got the eggs from and she doesn’t know. They are very cute!
Here are some more pictures:
So once again we have 22 chickens! They are all great!
Here is what we have at this point
1 Golden Laced Wyandotte
1 Barred Rock
1 Speckled Sussex
1 Dominique
1 Barnyard Mutt
1 Welsummer
1 Silver Laced Wyandotte
6 Buff Orpingtons
1 Cuckoo Maran
4 Ameraucanas
3 Black Australorps
1 Somthing??? Maybe a Buff Orpington or a New Hampshire Red?
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!!
Chickens are addicting!! We got our first 9 about a month ago. Then we hatched some. That took our number to 12.
Last week I purchased 13 more Buff Orpington eggs and I have them in the incubator now!
I also have 6+ Maran eggs on the way that will go in the incubator this week!!!
Well, today I had to run to the hardware store to pick up some 2X4’s to help me work on the coop! As I walked in, I looked across the street and the farm store had a sign out that said they had chicks! WOO HOO!!! After I got what I needed at the hardware store I went across the street to see what they had. They had RIR, Speckled Sussex, Marans, Silver Laced Wyandottes, & Welsummers.
Well, I couldn’t help myself, I ended up buying 3 Silver Laced Wyandottes & 3 Welsummers!! These are some of the chicks I have ordered from Lazy54, but since I have not heard ONE thing from them I’m going to cancel my order from them. The only chicks I don’t have that I wanted were Golden Laced Wyandottes, but I have others that I didn’t order, so all works out!!
Here are the Silver Laced Wyandottes. They will be a BEAUTIFUL laced chick and lay a nice brown egg.
Here are the Welsummers. They will be a brown chick, very pretty, and lay VERY DARK BROWN eggs!! (they look like little chipmonks right now!!)
I’m very happy with the new chicks! They are very cute and fun to have. This brings our total number of chickens up to 18 live chicks and around 20 eggs for the incubator!!
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!
Well, we have finished the incubator. We are very happy with how it turned out. It is now sitting in the dining room all plugged in trying to get it to stabilize.
First thing I had to do was to connect the fan we had from the old computer to the converter I bought at WalMart today. It was really easy to just splice the wires together.
Item Cost: $12.00 Total Cost so far: $29.54
As you can see, I left the fan in the housing it was already in. I thought this would be easier than trying to hook the fan up to the side of the ice chest. It works really well. The fan now sits about 3 inches off the floor of the incubator, and will circulate the air from the warm side to the cooler side very quickly. It also helps cover the fan so chicks or little fingers cant get down in to the fan that easy.
You can also see that I placed the thermostat in an electrical box that I had out in the shop.
Item Cost: $0.00 Total Cost so far: $29.54
I did this for 2 reasons. First was to cover up the exposed connection of the wires. It worried me a little bit. They are still slightly exposed (and I’ve been thinking of covering the box with some hardware cloth to protect it more) but not as bad as they were. Also, some reading I’ve done (and I’m sorry to the person who mentioned this before, but I don’t remember where I read it), people have said that the hot water heater thermostat isn’t really designed to test the ambient temperature, but the temperature of the water tank so attaching it to a metal box, will help regulate the thermostat some more (maybe, but that’s the story I’m sticking with, I don’t know anything about this stuff!!)
Here are some more pictures:
You can see that under the fan it is just open.
Exposed wires, but somewhat covered.
Next I took some hardware cloth we had in the shop
Item Cost: $00.00 Total Cost so far: $29.54
I cut out a tray for the eggs to sit on so they are raised off the floor a little bit. I also added a wall between the tray and the light/fan side of the box to protect the chickens when they hatch so they won’t go near the fan, water or light.
I then added some tin foil between the light and where the eggs will be to protect the eggs from direct heat from the lamp.
We then had to search all over the house for something to put in the lid so we could see down in to the incubator to check the temperature. Lilian finally remembered she had an old picture frame with a Plexiglas cover that was a perfect size. We cut out the hole in the top, made a ledge for it to sit on, and the brought out the good stuff, Duct Tape!! (wish we had orange tape, but we only had old siver. )
Item Cost: $00.00 Total Cost so far: $29.54
This last picture was taken about 2 hours after we plugged it in. Not bad. We are getting some spikes to 106° so it still isn’t perfect, but getting closer. You can also see that above the humidity was a little bit low so I added a small bowl with just a little bit of water and it brought the humidity up closer to where I would like to see it. We have a fire going in the house tonight so the home humidity is fairly low. Without the fire, we might not need much water during the winter. We’ll have to watch this.
Total Cost: $29.54
All in all Lilian and I have had a great time putting this together. She has been a great help! We are getting excited for our eggs to get here, and to see how well we’ll do. We’re not holding our breath for a 100% hatch rate. If we get a 30%, I think we’ll be thrilled!!
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.
Next year I’ll get it set right!! Stupid camera!!)
