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    Incubating and Hatching Homegrown Chicks: Permaculture Chicken, #4
    Incubating and Hatching Homegrown Chicks: Permaculture Chicken, #4
    Incubating and Hatching Homegrown Chicks: Permaculture Chicken, #4
    Ebook130 pages1 hour

    Incubating and Hatching Homegrown Chicks: Permaculture Chicken, #4

    By Anna Hess

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    About this ebook

    Prepare to embark on an egg-citing adventure, raising healthy chicks from your own eggs!

     

    Incubating and Hatching Homegrown Chicks walks you through the exhilarating process of chicken incubation. By the time you've turned the final page, you'll be confident of your ability to ensure successful hatches every time.

     

    Whether you're a novice or seasoned poultry parent, this comprehensive guide is your ultimate companion, providing invaluable insights and practical advice on every aspect of hands-on flock growth. With ninety full-color photos bringing incubation to life plus essential charts, diagrams, and tables providing hard data, you'll achieve a hatch rate of 85% or more without the angst of dead chicks.

     

    From understanding the role of flock management in a permaculture system to choosing the best incubator and troubleshooting common incubation problems, this book covers it all. Dive into topics like egg selection, incubation basics, hatch-related ailments, and post-hatch care. Then come away equipped with the knowledge and skills to turn eggs out of your coop into happy homegrown chicks.

     

    Don't miss out on the joy of successful hatching. Crack open the shell of excitement and start your journey into the fascinating world of chicken incubation today!

     

    Note: The first edition of this book was sold under the title Permaculture Chicken: Incubation Handbook.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWetknee Books
    Release dateJan 23, 2015
    ISBN9781507095201
    Incubating and Hatching Homegrown Chicks: Permaculture Chicken, #4

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      Book preview

      Incubating and Hatching Homegrown Chicks - Anna Hess

      Incubating and Hatching Homegrown Chicks

      Perpetuate a Self-Sufficient Backyard Flock!

      Anna Hess

      Copyright © 2024 by Anna Hess

      First edition Copyright © 2013 by Anna Hess, titled Permaculture Chicken: Incubation Handbook.

      All rights reserved.

      No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

      Contents

      1.Introduction

      2.Choosing eggs

      3.Incubators

      4.The first 18 days

      5.Hatching

      6.Incubation problems

      7.Raising chicks

      8.About the author

      Chapter 1

      Introduction

      Amuffled peep comes from a pristine egg. The egg vibrates gently as the fully-formed chick inside pushes its way into the air sac at the blunt end, then knocks against the inner wall of the shell with its egg tooth to make a breathing hole into the outside world.

      image-placeholder

      I watch with bated breath for seven hours. Nothing. I would have thought that the chick had perished if I couldn't see the membrane around its tiny beak flutter in the air currents of the chick's breathing. The baby chicken is only resting from its exertions and preparing for the most difficult adventure of its life to date.

      image-placeholder

      With sudden vigor, the chick goes back to work, whacking its face against the boundary of its minuscule world.

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      The unzipping process has begun. Piece by piece, the chick knocks a circle of shell fragments out of its way, cutting the top off the egg.

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      Once in the groove, the chick no longer stops to rest, except for brief breathers during which it peeps adamantly. I'm coming out!, I imagine the youngster saying.

      image-placeholder

      Within half an hour, the shell has nearly split in two.

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      Rather than laboriously rotating its body so it can continue pecking at the shell, the chick now puts its strong legs to work. Bracing its head against the blunt end of the shell and its feet against the pointed end, it puuuuuushes...

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      I can see sodden feathers through the crack, and I gasp in awe.

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      The egg begins to roll against its neighbors from the force of the chick's exertions.

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      Yet more chick becomes visible until... plop! The baby bird falls out onto the floor of the incubator.

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      All that effort has worn the poor chick out, so it lies there partially emerged for several minutes while it peeps ecstatically.

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      Then, with a massive flapping of incipient wings, the chick is free to drape itself across its unhatched siblings.

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      I'll never forget the excitement and drama of my first hatch. But I also remember the emotionally difficult aftermath when our first vibrant chick accidentally speared one of its later-hatching siblings with a toenail, killing the youngster immediately. Other chicks didn't even make it to the unzipping stage and I knew that their fatalities were (mostly) my fault.

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      This book walks you through perfecting the incubating and hatching process so you can enjoy the exhilaration of the hatch without the angst of (many) dead chicks. I'm not an expert on incubation, having only tried my hand at it six or seven times, but luckily the difference between a 15% hatch and an 85% hatch is pretty easy for even the amateur to grasp. Follow the tips in this book and you'll soon have happy, healthy, homegrown chicks pecking through the clover in your backyard.

      image-placeholder

      Why incubate?

      image-placeholder

      While we'd love our favorite hens to stick around forever, chickens have a limited shelf life. A hen begins to lay when she's about six months old, and she does her best work by the time she's a year and a half old. Depending on how hard-nosed you are, you might keep your laying hens for one year, two years, or three years, but after that, you're feeding large amounts of grain to an animal who has basically become a pet.

      If you want to replace those old hens who are no longer laying enough to pay for their feed, you've got several options. You might be able to find someone local who is selling point-of-lay hens (pullets just beginning to churn out eggs). More likely, you'll order chicks from a hatchery.

      There is a third option, however — incubating your own chicks from homegrown eggs. Raising new members of your flock at home has several advantages, the first of which is that you can incubate as few or as many eggs as you want. In contrast, hatchery-raised chicks usually require a minimum order of 25 birds to ensure that the youngsters produce enough body heat to survive two or three days in a mail truck. Backyard chicken keepers will be hard-pressed to find room for such a large flock.

      Even more important from a permaculture point

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