Eggs have arrived

[chicken slave]

I have received 18 eggs and just set them in the incubator, so fingers crossed in 21 days I should have some photos of lovely little chicks to post.
I have decided that keeping and rearing chickens is one of the worst addictions ever, even the OH is interested. The eggs are from cross breeds for egg laying qualities and it will be interesting to see what the chicks look like. This is the first time the incubator has been used so here's hoping

[lavender lou]

its great keeping chickens

We have used the incubator for all of our chickens and we have now even got ducks too by incubating the eggs.

It's very interesting to see the chickens growing inside of the eggs and especially when they hatch out

We have hatched over 100 eggs from our incubator.

keep us all informed of the progress...

[Birdie Wife]

Fingers crossed for a good hatch! Ickle chicks are jsut the loveliest things. Totally with you on the addiction thing, I started off with three white hens just a couple of years ago and now I have a mini chicken empire of all different shapes, sizes and colours. It's like Pokemon - gotta collect 'em all!

[steelsy]

I'd love to do that but I'm worried if I started I wouldn't have enough space for all the hatched chooks - it sounds like its quite addictive once you start!

[Hilary B]

Remember that some of the chicks will be male. What are you going to do with those? Some of us can eat them when they get big enough, others can pass them on to people who can eat them. If neither applies you could be in trouble!

[chicken slave]

I have no problems with growing them for the table, I also have a friend that keeps mixed free range and will take some off my hands if they are male, as for the female I will chose some for my own little flock and already have people lined up to take some with a donation to my chicken fund, we live in a community where money vary rarely exchanges hands but goods do, so if they want chickens they normally bring food for my chickens or offer a service which may be valuable. It has been very successful in the past so I hope it will be this time.