A busy bank holiday with Chickens

Eight months ago I lost all of my breeding stock.  Not a four legged predator but two legged opportunists.  It has taken all that time to regroup, find more land and set up an enclosure.  But I am finally there.  Today I all but finished a basic enclosure having transported the security fencing from the old plot to the new one on Bank Holiday Monday.  I could not have done it without Rachel.

As I type, I have just moved the three, 6 week old booted bantams onto some grass for the first time, I have three Ixworth chicks at 4 days old under a broody and in the incubator, I have two fertile silver lace Wyandotte eggs (bantam) one pipping.  Things are finally looking up on the poultry front so my fingers are firmly crossed.
For once I am firmly in control and this will be the end of my hatching for 2014.  Unless of course I get tempted by hatching my own quail eggs.

I only hope I have one male and one female In the Ixworth group, so that I can breed for my own purposes, and that both Wyandotte eggs hatch, with at least one male to go with my existing hen.

The ducks, whilst great fun are going.  We don't really eat enough duck eggs, and whilst I love the breed, they are not an animal I can keep whilst focusing on my chickens.  Fingers crossed I find a good home soon.

Sucessful Ixworth hatch

I left for work the morning, knowing that one of the Ixworth eggs under the broody hen had pipped.  But at no point did I believe when I returned this evening I would find four health fluffy chicks sat under mum.

The Wyandotte is a first time broody, so I had concerns about her sitting and turning the eggs.  But, Fear not, she has done a perfect job.  Ok I admit, the eggs were in the incubator until day 17/18 of incubation, but she has taken to looking after them like she has been sat on the same eggs for 21 days, amazing really. How do they know it's day 17/18 and that they should stop turning?
It's an amazing sight, and I never get bored of seeing white fluffy chicks underneath her, and whilst she still has to prove she is capable of teaching the chicks to eat and drink, she is my preferred broody over the reliable Treacle (a speckeldey).  Why when Treacle has proved her self again and again hatching but chicks and ducklings?  Well Treacle can only be describe as hormonal. She is so aggressive and causes so much damage to my hands even when charging water and food, it start to become unpleasant.  My newest recruit into the broody ranks is calm and placid.  Will let me stroke and touch her, she would even let my pick up the in hatched eggs and today reach in and get the chicks to check they are ok.  Not even a peck or a murmur.

This will make managing the cleaning, feeding, checking the chicks nice and easy and importantly, mean I can handle them to make sure they are used to humans.

Ixworth hatching eggs

It's day seven for the Ixworth eggs I have in my incubator and when candled, they were throwing up some rather strange shapes in the egg.  I'm sad to say I was not organised enough to take photographs (I was a little preoccupied by the boys wanting to see the chicks forming in the eggs). Only one is not fertile, two are well established but the others seem to be lagging behind somewhat.  I have left them in the incubator for now to see if they keep developing. Fearing the worst, they may have started to developed and died at 3-4 days old.  But only time will tell.
It's my first time hatching Ixworth eggs, and the plan is to keep a pair for hatching my own eggs to rear as table birds.  Something I have wanted to do for a long time but space and the theft at my allotment plot has put me off.

I guess I could buy in Ross Cobb or other hybrid bread table birds but I still see these birds as frankestine chickens.  From tiny chick to table weight in 6-8 weeks really does not sit right with me.  Yes it's cheaper as you feed less and you don't have the potential problems of cock birds fighting but I am convinced, it will be worth waiting 20-25 weeks for the Ixworth and we will be rewarded with great tasting meat.
Having said that, whether I will be joined eating the home reared meat my wife and kids, we will have to wait and see.  I guess the best was is not to tell them and find some spare supermarket stickers to slap on the birds.

I chose the Ixworth because it is a Brisith rare breed, in need of help and to me seems a perfect chicken for the smallholder.  I still don't class myself as a smallholder, yes I grow vegetables, I keep chickens, ducks and quail, but for me (and it's different for everyone) a smallholder provides meat as well as vegetables and eggs.    So I hope this is my first step toward the smallholding life, on a small scale, but one that will bring satisfaction from producing a roast dinner to be proud of from very local produce.

In the mean time, I'm preparing the Wyandotte hen and two ducks for the Spring show at the Royal Welsh show ground.  As she has aged, I think her lacing has become a bit tatty.  Having said that, maybe I'm just being critical and looking for perfection.

Broody or Incubator?

Until very recently, I would always turn to the incubator rather than encourage one of my hens to go broody.  Even though my first ever hatch of chicks took place under a broody, I still liked (and at the same time feared) the control I had over the incubator.  I could set it when I wanted and didn't need to separate hens. I also felt the eating eggs were precious and worth much more.  I could check on the eggs as often as I liked through the clear top of the incubator and not have to risking being savaged by a broody hen.  So all in all it made total sense .............that was until I decided, very recently to check how much it costs to run my incubator and brooder/electric hen.  Now I see why breeders keep hens as broodies.

Here is the calculation and explanation:

In 2013 the average UK price for electricity was 17.2pence per Kwh (Kilowatt per hour)

A Kw is 1000 watts.

So with my incubator being 130w

130/1000 then multiplied by 17.2pence = 2.236 pence per hour.

Cheap right?  Well my incubator tends to run for 28 days, the set up, incubation of 21 days and then the drying off before transferring.

2.236 x 24 hours = 53.6 pence per day x 28 days = £15 per hatch.

Ouch.  I only set six eggs and just 3 hatched.

The six eggs cost me £15, so for 3 day old chicks it has cost me £30.  Most are sold for £5 that I see advertised and the cost above is before feed and running the brooder/electric hen.

Of course if I had filled the 25 egg capacity incubator the price per chick would be lower, but it does drive home how much it costs to hatch your own on a small scale. Andy Crawthay (@chickenstreet) has written about this a few times I believe.  But it was my calculations for raising some Ixworth birds as "table" birds that shone a great deal of light on the subject for me.

To make it worth while I would need to hatch at least 16 chicks.  Assuming less that 100% hatch rate, that's quite a few eggs.  If i were to buy them that would prove very expensive, so then you are into the realms of keeping a pair or trio for eggs to hatch.

Not wanting to bore anyone, I worked out with feed and other costs for the pair I would need to hatch 18 at a time to make it worth while running the incubator.

So with a couple of two year old gold lace wyandottes, one of which going broody, I will be trying to take advantage of their urge to have little chicks as often as I can.

Thanks for reading.

Day four after hatching

Day four after hatching is going well.  The sablepoot chicks seem strong an healthy.........for now.  They say sheep have a habit of just dropping dead when they feel like it.  The same could be said for chicks.
I have done all I can for them since their arrival, with chick crumb and water available and newspaper being changed daily to prevent the spread if any disease.

I had set six eggs from South Yeo Farm in Devon in the incubator.  Five were fertile at day seven.  The the candeling photo below.  Sadly, just because they are fertile does not mean they will hatch successfully, and after three of the poots had arrived into the big wide world, I candled the other two and it was clear that once had stopped developing around day ten or twelve and the other day fifteen or sixteen.  These are guesstimates, based on the size of the air sack in the egg and the development of the embryo.
Still, three is better than none and I am already making a note and trying to guess how many male and female I have.

New land - deal done!

Today I signed my tenancy agreement that starts 1st May allowing me to keep chickens, ducks and turkeys.  I was starting to think I would never ever type the words.   It's been a long time coming but with a little compromise I finally managed to find some.
Sheer good luck and timing has resulted in me being able to buy an old chicken ark from a couple moving house down in Barry.  Twenty pounds was the agreed price. An absolute bargain and perfect for a breeding trio of bantams.

I admit thereis work to do to the ark but structurally it is sound.  I will be thoroughly cleaning the coop to make sure there are no red mite and other little critters, I may even paint the inside if the coop for good measure. Ideally I need a good enclosure to keep the foxes out. I'm thinking of using the herace fencing I have from the allotment, but transporting it is a big problem being 3 meters long and 2 meters tall. The other option is to buy a new enclosure like the one gardenlife.biz sell.  A significant cost which I want to avoid if I can.

It's not just Mr Fox that I am planning to keep out, but the two legged predator as well.  Back in September 2013 I have 13 pure breed hens stolen from my allotment in a neighbouring village. This time I am determined to make it more difficult.

The field is no close to a main road and has a well used path running through it, used regularly by dog walkers, so I am hoping activity and passers by will deter any thieves along with the secluded nature of the plot.  I'm going to use a padlock on the chicken ark initially with a built in alarm.  Any movement on the lock and the alarm will go off.

Yes, this is a risk, there is always a risk, but the alternative is to stop keeping chickens and breeding.  Something that would be particularly difficult for m to accept.  Especially since I have been going to poultry shows and had great fun and success at the Welsh national in January with my Wyandotte bantams.

Better planning needed for hatching

It's not quite a disaster, but I have had to give it a great deal of thought. When I ordered my Sablepoot eggs from South Yeo Farm in Devon I thought I had planned the timing perfectly. The eggs would hatch a week before Easter and mean that a friend could easily look after them for the couple of days that I am away.  That was on the basis that Good Friday was on the 25 April. I've no idea why I thought Easter was that late, and I only discovered my error when in work and the subject of holidays arose.

Normally it would not really matter and rightly or wrongly I have left eggs in an incubator whilst away before, just for a few days. But that was well before lock down and hatching. Timing could not be worse this time. The hatching date of the sablepoots is Friday 18th. The planned date I am leaving.

What to do? Hope they hatch early? Leave them for a friend to look after?  Well there is only one thing to do. Take the incubator with me. 

I have bought a cheap inverter for the car. It plugs into the 12v supply and converts to 220v with a socket for the mains plug. 

Sounds crazy, but the incubator will be in the boot whilst I drive and I can set up the incubator and brooder in the caravan when we get there.  Mad? Maybe but it will be fun to see what happens. And it won't be the first time I have taken the brooder away in the caravan. I did the same last year with a hatch of quail. They all turned out fine.  Although they were a week old before we took them away.

I will let you know how the journey goes and how the eggs fair especially as they are at the pipping stage whilst traveling.  I will need to make sure the eggs are stable in the incubator so they don't roll around and crack.  I may have to leave the dividers in for traveling or, maybe use some egg boxes to set the eggs in, just while we travel.