Incubation lessons learned

Hatching chicks can be exciting and frustrating all at the same time. My first try was with shipped eggs. None hatched. Only one even looked like it had a chance. I found my incubator fluctuated quite a bit and it was hard to keep the humidity between 35-40 like the instructions I found said to do. After that I found that if I wrapped my turner arm in a paper towel the humidity levels were better. I also added a bunch of large rocks from our backyard as heat sinks to try to keep the temp stable. I also moved the whole thing to our front room.
My next try was with 27 local eggs. They were 5 days old at the oldest and only had to deal with a couple car trips, no shipping. Over the first 18 days we lost a total of 11 eggs. 2 had cracks so they weren't a surprise, a couple clears, and the rest blood rings at different stages. On day 16 I had what I thought were 18 good ones but by day 18 it was only the 16. We are on day 21 and we've had 8 hatch. The chicks are all doing well and appear healthy. The last 8 haven't pipped yet. I am losing hope that they will.
I'm glad I kept a spreadsheet of temp and humidity readings 3x/day. It helps me look back and see what might have gone wrong. 8/27 eggs isn't a good hatch rate. My temps averaged 99.9 with a spike one morning of 102.4 and a low of 98.1. I'm not sure if the spike was a real one or not though. I found the water in my fake egg was low. After I filled it back up the temps came back down. So it may have been reading a weird temp as the water was low. My humidity averaged 28% before lockdown. It usually fluctuated between 17 in the morning to 35 in the evening (after adding some water in the morning).
That all looks pretty good to me. After reading about common symptoms in incubation (great site for this) I found a common thread in the problems I'm seeing... low ventilation. I have 4 small holes in the top of my bator for ventilation, plus I thought the hole around my turner arm would work too, but I didn't add any more holes to compensate for plugging that one up. It didn't help that one of my fans (the one I broke during installation) broke around day 11-12 and the remaining one stopped working around day 14.
So next batch (I already have the eggs for it) I'm going to change a few things.
1) I'm going to drill more holes around the top for ventilation
2) I'm going to add the new fan (salvaged from a broken laptop)
3) I'm going to add an entire layer of rocks on the bottom as heat sinks (I boil these first!)
4) I'm going to close off the ventilation holes for the first 3 days like I saw to do on one article.
5) I'm going to rotate the eggs once a week to ensure they aren't sitting in a hot or cool spot too long. I used 3 temps at one point to measure temps at different spots but 2 were measuring the air and the third was measuring inside an egg filled with water so it's hard to compare. The air ones said 100 deg though so I think that was ok.

We'll see how the next one goes!

Bountiful Baskets and CHICKS!

Chicks

Our home is overrun with chicks right now. We received our shipment of chicks from Meyer and had the same problem we did last year and lost about half of them. We are down to 19 out of all the chicks (1 D'Anver from the feed store died and we sold 2, the rest were deaths from the shipped chicks). I don't know why they die like that for us. They are at a good temp, we're using the new Eco-Glow from Brinsea so they can regulate their own temp more naturally. They have clean food and water. When we first got the chicks we could pick out about 5 that we didn't think would survive. They showed no interest in food or water even when dipping their beaks in it and were wobbly. All 5 of those died. After those 5 the rest of the chicks showed no symptoms. I would check on them in the evening then wake up to a dead chick or two every morning. Very frustrating! After about 1 1/2 weeks it stops and the rest are fine.
We have the following left:
2 white cochins
3 partridge cochins
1 easter egger
1 buff silkie
1 D'Anver
4 bantam white frizzle cochins (we think one is a roo, and one is smooth)
1 Ancona (?)
1 Lakenvelder (?)
2 mystery birds
3 bantam easter eggers (I think 2 are roos but we'll have to wait and see)

Not only these chicks but we put 27 eggs in the incubator from local breeders. We got 15 silkie eggs and 12 mixed breeds. 16 of those made it to lockdown on day 18. Today is day 21 - Hatching Day! Yesterday I woke up and went to record the temp/humidity like I always do and found this...

4 more hatched throughout the day. We woke up this morning to one more and another just hatched a few minutes ago. We have 8 left and none of them have pipped yet but I did hear chirping in a couple of them so hopefully they'll show themselves today.
Yesterday morning I picked up 8 cream legbar eggs from a local gal. They are such pretty blue eggs. I compared them to Amber's, our EE, eggs and they are pretty close to the same color. I'm tempted to keep one though since they are rare and sell for $$! Meyer hatchery sells theirs for $30/chick! Once we get our farm I'm thinking I could get a rooster and sell the eggs and chicks. I already have 2 buyers lined up for the chicks.
We only have room for 4 chickens so we have some decisions to make. So far our possibilities are:
bantam frizzle cochin
bantam cochin that we hatched
a silkie
Blue Copper Maran that we hatched (they are the chocolate egg layers)
Cream legbar
bantam easter egger (I think she's in the definite list)

A lot of our decisions will be influenced by gender on the bantams and hatched eggs. Hope we get some girls we like!

Here is a video of one of the chicks hatching. The other chicks block the way a little but it's still fun. I took a video of another one hatching too but it's not edited yet.

Bountiful Baskets

We signed up for Bountiful Baskets this week and it couldn't have come at a better time. We went grocery shopping and restocked our meat supply but didn't get many veggies. We picked up our bounty this morning. For those that are unfamiliar you contribute to Bountiful Baskets and they pool the money and use it to get a discount on produce. It is $15/basket in our area and we got the following in our "basket":

1 pineapple

1 bag of potatoes

10 apples

7 pears

7 bananas

celery

kale

lettuce

a bag of anaheim peppers

2 squashes

4 avocadoes

a box of mushrooms

I added this up with the cost at our local grocery store and it would've cost me $40!

The next step is figuring out what to do with it all. We don't very rarely use peppers, celery, pears, and mushrooms. And 10 apples will last us forever since I can't eat them (I'm allergic to fresh fruit!). 

So we broke out the dehydrator. We cut up all of the celery, a few apples, and the bananas we already had in the house and threw them in. We also cut the mushrooms and plan to do those in the next batch. I think I'll roast the peppers and then freeze them so we'll have them when I feel like making some salsa verde. I think I'll juice some apples and the pears and make fresh juice. Overall I think we'll participate again next time.

Scraps for the chickens. They are feasting today!

Corvina

Wolf and I are both hitting that point where we want to introduce something new to our usual menu. Yesterday at the store we walked by the fish and saw some Corvina. I've never heard of this fish before so we thought we'd give it a shot. After looking it up when we got home I found it's similar to sea bass, in fact many sites made out like they were the same thing. Either way it is a thick, white, meaty fish. After searching recipes I found 2 that sounded good so I blended them. I'll try to replicate what I did for you:

Preheat oven to 375deg. For the seasoning mix equal amounts of cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, and chili powder, plus 1/4 cayenne pepper (optional). Sprinkle each piece of fish with salt and pepper the cover one side in the seasoning mixture. Heat oil (coconut) in an oven safe saute pan until hot. Place the fish seasoning side down in the oil. Don't crowd the pan. Do not touch for 2 minutes! Don't check it. Don't move the oil around. Don't do anything! After 2 minutes, put the pan in the oven for 8 minutes. While it cooks in the oven cook the sauce:
Melt 3T butter in a med skillet. After butter has melted add 1 large chopped shallot and zest of 1 lemon. Once the shallots are soft add 1/4c of white wine (I used pinot grigio and didn't measure) and the juice of 1 lemon. Cook until thick, then add a couple tablespoons of heavy cream and mix. Make sure the sauce does not boil. Stir then after heated through set aside (I moved mine to a bowl to cook the asparagus in the same pan).
Remove the fish from the oven and using spatula turn onto a plate (I placed mine on some butter/garlic rice).

The asparagus I just cooked it in a little coconut oil in the same pan as the sauce until it was soft and lightly charred.

Pour sauce over everything and enjoy!

Ingredient list:
Corvina or other thick fish
1 lemon
cinnamon
cumin
turmeric
shallot
salt/pepper
white wine
heavy cream
shallot
asparagus (optional)