Egg Hatching 101: Day 17 Beak Turning

If your incubator has any type of rocking device like ours does (or automatic egg turner), today is the last day that is will need to be used. Tomorrow it should be turned off (or in our case, removed), and the eggs will be laid on their sides for the remaining incubation period. This gives the chicks a few days to orient themselves inside the eggs and prepare for hatching.

Day 17:

Beak turns for access to air cell

→ See our entire Egg Hatching 101 Series up to this point here. ←

This post is part of a series about hatching eggs on The Farm at Beaman’s Fork blog.
Want to help support the farm? Please visit our online store or visit us
at the New Bern Farmer’s Market!

Comments

Team Greta

Friday, February 9th started off as a normal day in the barn, but as I was doing chores and feeding the horses and goats, I quickly suspected that Greta, one of our La Mancha goats, was showing early signs of labor. It was her due day, so I wasn't surprised. I removed her from the herd and placed her into one of the three kidding stalls in our barn so that she could have some peace and quiet. Four hours later at 10:46am, she delivered two beautiful big twin boys. As per her normal (this is her third year with babies), she was quite proud of herself and insisted on showing them off to me nonstop. The twins were up and wobbling around in no time and Greta was a busy mom fussing over them. Saturday morning was uneventful and Greta and her twins were comfortable in their kidding stall, but by early afternoon, something wasn't right. Greta wasn't finishing her meals and she just seemed tired. I took her temperature at 3pm and it was normal -- 101.9 -- even though she

Here a chick, there a chick... and dealing with burn out.

After taking more than a year off from raising chicks, our first little fuzzy munchkins arrived last week via USPS from a hatchery in Iowa. I ordered them late last fall for their first 2017 delivery date, and instead of going with our usual production layer breeds, I opted for the rare breed section and pretty much just kinda sorted ordered two of everything. Looks like we will have an interesting flock this year but that's not really what I am here to talk about. Living on a farm of any size, especially with livestock, is a lot of work every single day. Goats, chickens and horses don't take holidays off and neither do you; you have the same morning, noon, and evening chores no matter if Santa is flying in or a hurricane is blowing through. Throw in elderly animals with special needs (we've got two horses well into their 30s and a blind dog with congestive heart failure), and you've got an additional element of care and attention on your list. Sometimes you ne

Behind the scenes

If you haven't seen already, we have a YouTube channel that has been pretty active lately... Don't forget you can subscribe to our YouTube channel and keep up with all of our new stuff and silly farm shenanigans!

Beaman's Fork Farm Blog

Search This Blog