Today marks the start of the second round of turkey egg hatchings! This batch should be about 30 turkeys due to arrive by wednesday night! Today would be 1 day early, wednesday 1 day late. Turkeys are amazingly predictable in hatching! (I wish our own kids births were this predictable!)
We will post counts and pictures as the little ones pop out of their shells.
Our incubator is full with about 100 more eggs waiting to be moved to the hatching chamber, bringing hte total number of turkeys this year to about 145 and still counting!
Remember you can pay your deposit now to purchase your holiday birds for thnksgiving and/or christmas. A deposit is 50% of your desired bird type (toms at about 15 lbs and hens at about 10 lbs). At thanksgiving the birds will be on the lighter side and on christmas on the heavier side.
Follow along our adventure as we make the transition from corporate city life to the world of natural farming. Each day brings a new experience and brings us to a deeper understanding about the life and spirit that made America great. At our farm we do our best to give the animals we raise a natural, free, happy, stressfree lifestyle. Our mission is to learn and share how to manage a farming operation that is both profitable and humane.
UPDATE: 8 more turkey hatched overnight, bringing hte newly hatched total to 9. We added these 9 to the 13 in the brooder for a total of 22. By the time we got back to the house, another one had hatched! So far all look healhty and strong.
ReplyDeleteThe incubator is once again full with 100+ eggs, and about 20 in the hatching chamber.
UPDATE: By noon today we had 6 more hatchings. While we were checking, a seventh pushed his shell open right then. We moved the 6 dry birds to the brooder but let the seventh one in to dry off a bit first. That makes 28 turkeys in the brooder and what now sounds like several more in the hatching chamber. I dont like to take them out to the brooder at night, I prefer to let them spend their first night in the warm moist incubator to ease their transition into life.
ReplyDeleteUPDATE: We awoke this morning to find 16 more turkeys hatching and doing fine inside the hatching chamber! There was one just pushing hte shell open and 4 more starting to hatch. This accounts for all the eggs in this round except for 2 with no signs yet.
ReplyDeleteMoving the 16 new ones to the brooder makes a total of 44. All o fhte original 28 were account for and doing fine.
Unfortunately we had a mishap. We decided to hang another heat light, becasue hte 2 were getting too crowded. While hanging the light I stumbled and crushed one of the little turkeys. Sad as it is, the little guy didnt make it.
So we end the mroning with a total of 43 turkeys in the brooder.
UPDATE: this evening we moved 4 more turkeys to the brooder, but then we sold 4 as poults, so the count remains constant at 43.
ReplyDeleteFINAL UPDATE: this batch of eggs is finished now. We got 2 more healthy turkeys, and 1 didnt make it out of the shell. that makes a total of 45 healthy turkeys, and only 2 that didnt hatch right.
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