Fuffy Little Butts!

We have had this incubator for a few years and have never used it before. We bought it used and mostly just let a broody hen hatch our chicks or we bought them from Rural King already hatched. But we don't have a hen that wanted to go broody, so we used this artificial 'hen' this time. I have the towels wrapped around it to keep the temperature more stable inside.

We saved eggs for nine days and put them inside on the automatic turner. The wire you see here is the thermometer probe.

The temperature was fairly stable, it would go up and down about 3 to 4 degrees. We let it run with no eggs in it for a week, until we could determine how it would work. Once we were satisfied with its performance, we added the eggs, then...just have patience!

Here is my homemade candler. I candled the eggs on day 5 and 13. You could see the embryo on day 5 just kicking and wiggling inside of the shell! On day 13, half of the egg was full of chick, but you could still see movement.

This was on day 20, yesterday. You can see that pipping has started to take place. This was at 8:45 AM and the first chick hatched out of its shell at 8:25PM.

Then, nothing much happened, for hours. There was a little movement here and there, but nothing much.

This wet and bedraggled little bundle, was the first to exit its shell.

I got up in the night, (didn't go to bed until about 12:00AM) and the second one had just hatched.

Here is the last one to finally make it out, at 8:30 AM this morning!

All nine of them HATCHED! We are so blessed! 100% hatch is unusual. Aren't they just too cute?

Especially those FUFFY LITTLE BUTTS!!!