Sorry for such a delay in posts. It's been a busy time!
I'll try to get back and add more info/pics later but here's a quick run down of what I've been up to...
1) We got a box of lemons. I juiced them, took the rind off and dried/froze it, dried some, made lemon salt and sugar, and made lemoncello. The lemoncello is done and VERY yummy! I made 1 batch normal and 1 creamy. You make the creamy one by substituting milk for the water. Problem I ran into was that my milk keeps precipitating. It separates and looks gross. I think it's because I used the whole lemons instead of just the rind so I have a lot more citric acid and it's interfering with the milk. It still tastes great but I think I'll try making one more batch of creamy with just the rind to see how it turns out.
2) We decided to move a little sooner than expected on buying a forever house so we've been doing projects all over our current house including finishing up the patio, staining the stairs, redoing the bathroom floors, replacing a window, painting, regrouting the tile floors, and general decluttering. We finally got it done enough to list it. Yeah!
3) Outside in the garden I have lettuce, spinach, carrots, garlic, peas, raspberries, and asparagus taking off like crazy. Inside I have starts of my warm weather plants like tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. I'm not going to plant them here. I'm hoping they'll last in their plastic cups until we get to a new house.
4) I'm making myself a purse. I love my current purse but I use it daily and it's starting to show the wear. I can't find a replacement I like so I'm making my own version, slightly bigger and more pockets, including an area for concealed carry if I so desire.
5) One of our chickens went broody. We got 1 1/2 dozen eggs to put under her. Unfortunately she kept letting the other chickens get in the nest box to lay their eggs and they slowly cracked all but 6 of them. I cleaned the nest box numerous times but the yolk still soaked into the wood. Then we got a huge snow storm that melted right into that box. Not surprisingly none of the eggs hatched. :(
6) Our chicks (from Meyer and hatching) are growing like crazy. We have 3 roosters, a maranX, a silkie, and another mix. We plan to eat the unknown mix. He's huge and mean (he already bit my daughter!). We hope to add a few more chicks of a few breeds.
7) The radiator on my cherokee sprung a leak right before a trip to NM. I didn't feel like spending $600+ getting it replaced so I did it myself. Quite a learning experience. Wolf was at work but thanks to YouTube I got most of it done. I couldn't get one bolt loose and I needed more than 2 hands to get the radiator out. But other than that I got it disconnected and got the new one back in. I also recharged my A/C. Fun stuff!
That's all I can think of right now. I'll have to look through my pics and see what else I've done! I'll add pics to this as soon as I get them off my phone.
Monday, May 26, 2014
Saturday, March 15, 2014
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!
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!
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