Thursday, March 31, 2011

102 turkey eggs

Our new incubator came in today after a little delay with UPS. And it is just in time, the other temporary incubator and the little one from last year were overflowing with eggs! We went right to work setting it up and filling it.

The incubator we chose is the Brinsea OvaEasy 190.  It had all the features we wanted (settable temp, automatic humidity control, clear front door, hatching tray at the bottom)  and is lighter than the wooden models. I also like the ability to control the egg turning frequency.

Unfortunately the auto humidity control can't be connected yet because they apparently neglected to include the connectors for the piping in the shipping box.  It seems to work ok though for now by just filling the water reservoir and controlling the humidity with the vent. Our home stays fairly constant on humidity this time of year.

In the picture you see the old 24 egg incubator sitting on top. Hunter is using this to hatch some of his chicken eggs. The little unit on top right is the auto humidity control and water reservoir.






So far we have 102 Narraganset eggs incubating. The first are due to hatch in 2 weeks. Candling them tonight showed that so far 100% are fertile and growing. There is room for only 6 more eggs and it will be completely full. That will be by end of tomorrow. At that point I will let the hens start sitting and hatch some eggs in the field, while we incubate the first 108 eggs. Once the first set of 24 or so are ready to hatch in 2 weeks they are moved to the bottom and 24 more can be placed in, providing a constant rotation. Our goal is to hatch about 200 turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

If we get more than we need, we will offer young birds for sale also. Time will tell!

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