My Pet Chicken Blog

Hatching eggs can be such a fun adventure!  It can be fraught with ups and downs, successes and failures… chicks and no chicks. It’s pretty easy to get NO chicks… but to get YES chicks, you want to calibrate your hygrometer properly. I was always an AVID hatcher, but I have to admit, it doesn’t mean I […]

Egg candling can be a most addictive experience.  Years ago, when I first started home incubation, egg candling would begin on the third day, and then happened again nearly every day thereafter until lockdown. I couldn’t get enough. Secluded in a dark room with a very strong flashlight, I would imagine my pile of eggs […]

Hatch day–finally! I’m not sure how it can seem as if it takes forever to get here and also as if it’s hardly been 21 days, both at once. It does seem like it took no time and forever, though. So, there were no power outages during incubation that would cause  problems. The temperature and […]

Day 18: LOCKDOWN. (Cue the “prison door slamming” sound effect.) Actually, I sort of hate that term, “lockdown.” Instead of locked doors, I’d rather be thinking of fuzzy little chick faces peering out of my hand.   But at the same time, calling it “lockdown” can be a good reminder.  It means, “After this time, […]

You know, when I incubated in a styrofoam incubator, there was always a lot to talk about. I was always fussing like a silkie mom, though. Actually, I’m sure my family got silly-tired of hearing me talk about it. My husband, bless him for his patience, would ask me several times a day how the incubation […]

I want to be patient, I really do.  It’s hard, though. I mean, you remember that feeling you’d get as a kid when your birthday approached? That almost unbearable anticipation? That’s what I have. Well, stop whining, Lissa. Act like an adult. You cannot open your presents early.

I love hatching chicks at home. I LOVE seeing their first blinky-eyed look at the world outside their little egg. I love that when they’ve first hatched, I can put my hand inside the brooder, and they all rush to snuggle beneath it like I’m their mother hen. I love hatching beneath a real mother […]