The plan was to go to church this morning and then over to Dad's for his birthday gathering. I don't know what happen and I hate to say it but church took the back burner this morning.
Without even posting on Craig's list, people just started coming by and wanting animals. Yall know me, I hate to turn away anyone so we stayed home from church and sold. In between customers I was able to throw together a little project that has been on the books for a while now.
My buddy Dave had some extra 3/4" plywood laying around and gave me a couple of pieces. I decided to go ahead and build the incubator the wife has been wanting for a few weeks now.
Thisa is my own design I took from several different incubator builders. It is 17"X17"X48".
I put the wife's bathroom fan at the top with vent holes behind it and scraped out an old foam incubator for the top heating element and thermostat. It will hold four egg turners at a time. The water tub will sit to the right of the fan.
The bottom has 2-light bulbs that are wired into the thermostat and will hold about 50 eggs and will be used as the hatcher.
Each shelf will be loaded one per week. That way the hatcher area at the bottom will be hatching out 42 eggs a week and then the tray will be reloaded and started all over. It should be a continuous cycle.
This incubator should hatch out 168 eggs a month on the way it is set up now. That gives us a total of about 300 eggs a month now.
The wife is already talking about incubator number two.
This one cost $0.00. The next one will be a little more.
We had to cut my Dad's birthday get together a little short. We had more people coming over to buy some goats. So far this weekend we sold four goats and and I don't know how many chickens. I think the selling is done for a while until we can build back up or hatch more chicks out.
Her is something that will make you smile. This goose is named Duck, Duck and she has been sitting on a clutch of eggs for almost 40 days. We hated to do it but we had to throw the eggs out. She did not hatch any at all.
We have a few Heavy breed Cochin chicks that have the run of the yard and Duck, Duck adopted them as her own. I guess she thinks they are her eggs that hatched? She herds them around showing them where the food is and keeps the other geese away. The chicks have now accepted her as their momma and do what ever she tells them.
Doesn't that just make you want to say "Awwww how precious"
That incubater is really nice!
ReplyDeleteI hope Duck doesn't try to make her "babies" swim.
With a goose named Duck, Duck ...you KNOW you have to name a chicken Goose, don't you? LOL
ReplyDeleteWord must be getting around if you're having actual buying customers show up when you haven't advertised. That's good, right?
: )
SFG, That is funny right there. I didn't even think about that.
ReplyDeleteWWRWH, We have a hen named Roger, a rooster named Bull Dog and a goat named Lipskins. I didn't do it.
The people thing is good and bad. When you are expecting people things look nicer. If someone just drops by, then they have a chance of seeing the Mini Farm not in it's full splendor.
Thank yall for the comments.