As “ refugees ” from the hustle , fuss and often chaos of urban living , my married woman and I retired to a rural mise en scene . We purchased some raw acreage and began the cognitive process of spring up it with a house and a distich of outbuildings for storage and shop facilities . We undertake to be as ego - reliant as potential . Having had piffling old experience in rural livelihood , we have spent years living on a “ learn - as - you - go ” foundation in adapting to our new lifestyle .
With the advent of our first spring , we considered stock and settled on raising Gallus gallus for eggs and sum , buying 15 chicks at the local provender - supply depot . We took home 13 hens and two cock .
While the bird were domiciliate in irregular brooder facilities , we quickly constructed a hencoop and an external run for that sizing of a flock . Once matured , the hens laid anywhere from six to a full dozen eggs a day in the first year , count on their moods , the weather and the season . The rooster fight back and played Casanova to the hen throughout the year . One became dominant and the other so intimidate that he would n’t go outside without being chased back into the coop .
Let’s Try Incubation
After a year of working with our original flock , and because our hens had n’t gone brooding , during the first calendar week of the following April a conscientious objector - prole loan us atabletop equipment for incubation . We planned to try our hand at hatching eggs because it became plain early on the theme of motherhood seemed completely foreign to our live fille .
Egg egg laying became a daily drop - and - walk - away event in the coop ’s nests .
Not knowing what we were doing , we score the book , reading up on ball brooding . We learned it would take approximately 21 days to hatch and that the temperature needed to be maintained continuously at 99 degrees with a 10 - moment cooling period twice a day . Also , we had to make certain the incubation humidity whould be a perpetual 75 percent , meaning adding water to a trough in the brooder at least once a day .
We also calculated that a percentage of the eggs would n’t hatch , and some chicks would n’t survive the hatching process . Hatched chicks were to be kept in incubation condition for 24 hours after hatching , and on and on .
With a possible 30 to 50 per centum red during the process and wanting to successfully hatch maybe 10 fresh chicks , we lade the brooder with 23 bollock ( about three daysof laying ) . Then , we start the process : check the thermometer in the incubator every match of hours , adjust the heat ascendence accordingly and filling the water manger when needed to keep incubation conditions right .
All the while , we question if we were just wasting our prison term and electrical energy .
Pay Attention to Murphy’s Law
Like clockwork , on the 21st daytime , we watched the first chick radar target , then break , the shell and come forth , wet and pathetic . By 6 p.m. , three had hatched and were drying and botch up . At 9:55 p.m. , while other shell were begin to crack , the power close down !
( We had received a letter from our galvanising public utility company announcing power outage in our area for up to 12 time of day for alternate of sub - station equipment but with no schedule date . )
Power was n’t re - established until 5:55 a.m. The outage go exactly 12 hours to the minute . When the palpebra of the brooder was opened , we expected the worst but were or else inundated with cheep and scurrying dame : 18 eggs had hatched and more were crack open .
By the end of it all , 22 of the original 23 eggs cover successfully . Two other chicks subsequently died within a yoke of twenty-four hour period , which is commonplace , leave us with an even 20 chick to worry for . As it turned out , we had an even split of 10 hen and 10 roosters .
Read more : quick to try egg incubation ? Here are some bedrock you should live .
Where Do We Go from Here?
Because a great composition board box in the laundry room is n’t much of even a brusk - time solution to hold 20 chicks for very long , a 4 - by-8 - infantry incubator ( coop / pen ) was built for the skirt , with plans to build up a second one within day , as the first will become excessively crowded within a couple of weeks .
With the first one finished and the chicks relocate , the expression of the 2d one pop . A couple of hens from our original flock decided , within a hebdomad of each other , that maternity was not such a bad idea , go reflective and refusing to forget the nests in their coop . One was setting on 10 orchis while the 2d hen was setting on six more .
examine to move them only caused them to growling and pick at at one ’s hands . ( Yes , chicken can growl . )
Broody hens should be separated from the flock to hatch and raise their young until the chicks are big enough to protect themselves . crybaby do n’t have the smartness to consider modest chicks anything but a meal , like the bug that they skin up from the footing ! Adult chicken can come along to be strong-growing to another ’s youthful .
We line up our plans and priority and constructed two pensive hen pen ( aka , maternity wards ) , one for each setting hen . This allowed them a peaceful place for their 21 - daytime mesmerizing enchantment and to raise their young until they were onetime enough to join the main flock and declare their own .
With the oncoming of hotness of an early summer arriving at the same prison term , this meant a crash program in cage and incubator construction in temperature strive into treble digit readings . The first brooder build was get too small for 20 grow chicks , so once the pregnancy wards were end up , it was time to finish the second brooder penitentiary .
The next step was to separate the hens from the cock in the original incubator - brood batch and build another henhouse and 1000 , complete with roosts and nest .
To keep fighting to a minimum , and to give the hens a break , a cock coop and pen also had to be built before the boys give away what their “ mission in life ” was . Upon completion of the hen - house and penitentiary , the only thing exit was to build a rooster house so that the roosters could be systematically cycled between the chicken coop and their cock quarters , giving all of the hens a break from their incessant conjugation action .
And what did we do with the mark hens ? Well , the first one hatched all 10 of her eggs , so there were 10 more chicks . The 2d one hatched three of the six eggs and abandoned the other three once her chicks were hatched . Of the 13 chicks that had hatched , the cock population develop by five more .
Combined with the hatch wench , we end up with a total of 15 rooster and 18 hens .
Lessons Learned
Continuous cohabitation of roosters and hen in a single coop and pen was not the greatest estimation , as we learned from raising the original flock . Roosters are aggressive when it comes to their favorite hens and have only one affair on their creative thinker . They constantly fought and mated , tear the feathers off the hens and literally running them ragged .
Because of the competition for the ma’am , when more than a single cock take the flock ’s living quarter they tended to be extra aggressive , even to us and would turn over on us at a dip of the hat .
What start out as an experimentation in ego - sufficiency as far as bollock and meat is occupy expand proportionately . We went from one hencoop and indite to a yoke of additional full - sized cage , a couple of brooder pen that doubled as emergency closing off facility for mad or injured bird , and a full - time cock planetary house .
Beginning with a flock of 15 and ending the spring with a total flock of 48 meant that as the older hoot aged beyond a productive aliveness , others were readily uncommitted to take their spot . egg were in abundance , allowing us to append extended kinsperson member and sell off the excess at a local Farmer market along with harvest that we had begun growing .
The cock and some of the hen were sold either as meat or as darling . Twice every class , a regular client buys all of the roosters we put up for cut-rate sale .
While it initially appeared as an overpowering situation , things worked out to our benefit despite forcing us to expand more than we wanted to at the time . In subsequent years , we now have adequate facilities usable to each success . We instruct quickly to be naturalistic in what we bid for , making succeeding hatch seasons more achievable and , though not totally , more predictable .
In the following hatching season , incubation involved 25 eggs with a success rate of 23 hatched . However , the disproportional number of six hen and 17 roosters that resulted has made us rethink the mind of purchasing sexed chicks rather than facing the unknown of brooding of our peck ’s eggs , which may make more economical good sense .
This article originally look in the March / April 2023 matter ofChickensmagazine .
