Incubation – Hatching

Incubating and hatching chicken eggs.

Guinea Fowl – The Next Generations

Jason Incubation - Hatching, Poultry , , , , ,

A post on Guinea Fowl to make up for missed posts.

We’ve been raising Guinea fowl since we move out to Westport.  Tricia ordered our first batch of 15 to help with bug control and because they are so ugly they are cute.   They are free range and though we lock them up at night, the flocks numbers vary due to predators.

I wasn’t convinced they were doing all that great of a job until we lost all of them for about a year, summer to the next summer.  The second summer, we had bad Japanese beetles and more ticks than normal.  While America doesn’t have a predator for adult Japanese beetles, guineas eat the young grubs in the ground.  Coincidence or not, I’m attributing the low beetle and tick population to the guineas.

Survivors. Far right is the lonely teen.

Starting 2019, our flock was down to 4.  Guineas lay eggs in late May and like to lay in tall grass in the open field, not in convenient boxes like chickens.  So it’s hard to get eggs to hatch; however, by keeping their aviary door closed for a few days, I was able to get 8 eggs in May; 4 hatched. I kept

Hatch-lings from clutch of 40

these in the brooder about 5 weeks so they’d be bigger when introduced with the others.  Guinea flocks are fickle and instead of having one flock of 8, we had a full grown flock of 4 and a flock of 4 smaller “teens”.  They would not join flocks, but frequently the flocks congregated near each other.

In July something attacked them during the day.  I had 8 when I let them out and that night only 3 adults, 2 injured, and 1 teen.  While the Guineas didn’t want to combine flocks, they decided to take in the stray teen.  So the adults adopted the teen and we were back to a flock of 4 again.

18 days prior to the attack we found a clutch of 40 guinea eggs hidden in tall weeds.  I had people interested in guinea chicks if I could get them, so I figured I’d try hatching them.  After the attach I was glad I did.  I managed to fit 29 in the incubator, but not knowing which ones were newer or older it was just a crap-shoot on how many would hatch; 12 did.

Combined flock, teen is second from Right on the back perch.

I broodered these for about 2 1/2 weeks, then added them to our flock thinking we’d have 2 flocks again.  I was pleasantly surprised to see the adults take them in.  Maybe age was a factor.  Or maybe with so many, they figured the better join forces or be the minority.  🙂

Harassing our dog

It’s been fun watching our 3 adults, 1 teen, and 12 younglings run around.

 

-Jason

Dual-purpose Chickens – 3 – Incubation

Jason Dual Purpose, Incubation - Hatching, Layers, Poultry , , , ,

In fall of 2014 I decided I wanted to raise some dual-purpose chickens.  The main focus was on incubating my own birds to raise as “panfrys”, traditional meat birds frequently used in pan frying.  So let’s do some hatching.

 

Spring was rocking and rolling.  The nine hens were producing 6-7 eggs on average and it didn’t take me long to fill all 27 slots in my incubator.  I had purchased an INCUVIEW incubator off a recommendation from TSP Podcast 1373.  I really like this incubator as it’s almost “set it and forget”.  Periodic checking the humidity and straightening the rows of eggs are all that’s needed.  The last 10 days of my 5th run went unattended while we were on vacation.

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The Delaware/Buff mix produced a 74% hatch rate.  Having never hatched chickens before we spend hours watching the chicks work their way out of the eggs.

 

Then off to the brooder to be raised like the other meat birds.  This part of my plan went smoothly.

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-Jason