Backyard Chickens
Hatching Black East Indie Duck Eggs
Black East Indies are beautiful bantam duck with a beetle green sheen to their feathers. They make an excellent addition to a barnyard or home flock. Black East Indie hatching eggs can be hard to find, but they are worth the effort to do so! Once you have them in hand I hope that these simple instructions are helpful to you. The green sheen of Black East Indie duck feathers is beyond compare. Why Black East Indie hatching eggs? Black East Indies can be hard to find locally. For many people, ordering hatching eggs is the only way to acquire these birds. Ordering hatching eggs, of any breed, and having them sent through the mail is risky and I generally consider anything over a 50% hatch rate to be a great success.… Read Full Post
Candling call duck eggs
Candling call duck eggs is just like candling eggs of any type, except more exciting because they are call duck eggs! I get a few questions about how to know if eggs are still good or not, especially if a duck gets off of her nest. The best way to tell is to candle the eggs by shining a bright light through them. This can be done with a special candler or even just by using the light on your cell phone. This photo shows me using the built in candling light on my Nature Right 360 incubator. I can tell you that I definitely look at my eggs a lot more than I ever have with this because it’s right there and so darn easy to just take a little peak!… Read Full Post
How do eggs hatch?
We had a very busy weekend around our house with 13 duck eggs and 4 chicken eggs hatching! I was sharing photos on Instagram and had a lot of questions about the hatching process and how do eggs hatch? There are lots of sources online, but I am going to share some photos from this weekend and try to explain without using too many technical terms. The above image shows an egg being “candled” to reveal the chicks growth inside the egg. This egg was about 7 days along in its development. The veining is really good to see! The empty spot on the left of the egg is the air sack. Three days before my eggs are scheduled to hatch I again candle the eggs and use a pencil to draw on the egg where the air sack is at within.… Read Full Post
Hatching call duck eggs
More than anything, a post on hatching call duck eggs might be just to show off some of this incredible cuteness. I mean, it is really too much! If you are receiving your eggs through the mail, unwrap them carefully and allow the eggs to rest (blunt end upward) for 24 hours before setting in your incubator. Eggs may not be perfectly clean, but that’s okay. If there are large chunks of debris on them you can remove them with a fingernail. I have also used a small piece of very fine grade sandpaper to clean. The key here is to avoid using liquids that could allow bacteria to enter the egg. Much of the information available on incubating and hatching chicken eggs can be applied to ducks, as long as the important differences between these two species are taken into account.… Read Full Post
Pet-Proofing Your Backyard For Summer
Summer is almost here, and if you’re making grand plans to spend time in your backyard, you need to start getting it in ship-shape. There are always plenty of jobs that can be done in your backyard, but one of the most important is pet-proofing it. Whether you have cats, dogs, chickens or anything else, your pets’ safety when outside is important. Need some help getting started? Here are some tips for pet-proofing your backyard for summer. Secure the premises The first thing you need to do to make your garden safe for pets is to check that all of your fencing is intact. This means going around and checking every panel to see if there are any damaged or loose panels, identifying gaps and putting everything right.… Read Full Post
Backyard Chickens Update
I realized today that its been awhile since I’ve posted an update on our backyard chickens. Well, I know there are several people that find the story I am about to tell you very funny, but it is both infuriating and heartbreaking to me. The little chicks that we raised in our bathtub were doing fantastic. We were handling them several times a day to ensure they would be friendly, we named them after our favorite baseball players, and everything seemed to be going well. Our little chickies were growing so fast! When we moved them outside to their coop they didn’t miss a beat. They went upstairs to roost each night, still came to say hello when we fed them… it was great.… Read Full Post
Bringing Home New Chicks
Our new chicks are here! I am happy to announce that we brought home our four new chicks and all are doing well and are getting their start in our bathtub– much to our pug’s delight! We were lucky enough to find a breeder that has many different breeds hatching at the same time so that we can have a variety. Yes, this is not the method a true farmer would follow, but I want to be able to tell them apart and call them by name. Bringing home new chicks is SUPER exciting. The peeping from the box in my lap on our drive home was almost more than I could take! We were able to get four chicks: one Black Copper Maran, one Ameraucana, one Buff Orpington, and one Barred Rock.… Read Full Post
Preparing for Baby Chicks
I have to be honest. I meant to get to this last week, but then I got so excited about getting our new chicks that I didn’t take the time to get this post written! Our new baby chickens have arrived and all are doing great. This piece will guide you on the steps that we took preparing for baby chicks and some of the tricks we’ve learned. Our goal was to create a brooder in our house for our young chicks. Brooder is the technical term for a device or structure for the rearing of young chickens or other birds. The most important factor is keeping the young chicks warm and safe. It is recommended that newly hatched chicks are kept at 95 degrees and then the temperature can be decreased by 5 degrees every week thereafter.… Read Full Post
Our Inexpensive Chicken Coop
One of the most frequent questions that I get about our backyard chickens is about our inexpensive chicken coop. Now neither Mike or I are extremely talented or handy when it comes to carpentry skills so when we decided to get our chickens we knew we would need to buy a coop. After some time spent searching the world wide web I came across this Boomer & George Deluxe Chicken Coop at hayneedle.com. I felt pretty lucky to be shopping on a day that they were offering free shipping and ended up paying less than $270 for the whole thing. Now that might seem like a lot to a carpenter, but there is no way I could even attempt to build this for that price (I would have to buy tools, lumber, and probably some wine too). … Read Full PostFollow Me
About Me
My name is Keri and I am as comfortable speaking to a group about color in the garden as I am covered in dirt.
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