Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Counting My Chickens

They made it. My eggs arrived via Priority Mail today. All 32 of them are intact and in seemingly perfect condition and resting comfortably in the incubator.



I only ordered 26. Looks like Iggy and Etta decided to get busy and double their chances of populating our coop. So our totals going into the incubator are 12 White Crested Black Polish (the big hair chickens), 12 Plymouth Barred Rocks, 3 Barred Rock over Blue Ameraucana, 3 Barred Rock over Buff Orpington and 2 Barred Rock over Cochen/Silkie Rock mix. So this should be interesting to see what we end up with because as the old saying implies, it's unlikely they will all hatch.

There are lots of factors going into their survival. It's a crap shoot really. One, the egg may not even be fertile. Two, the shipping may have caused issues. Three, there may be issues with the incubator. Four, they may fully develop and then for no apparent reason not be able to break out of their shell. Or five, I may do something stupid and screw things up. As you can see lots of things could go wrong. Particularly with me involved. So for the next three weeks, while all of you are going about your productive lives, I'll be sitting here staring at and turning eggs three times a day while biting my nails. If all goes well I'll have some cute little fuzzy things to show you in 21 days.

3 comments:

Jen said...

This is soooo exciting!!! My Great Uncle worked for the Zoo way back when so his wife had to carry ostrich eggs around in a special apron to keep them incubating!!

Sandy said...

I can't wait to see all the little peeps!

Anonymous said...

My in-laws got the mail order chickens 2 years ago and only 1 didn't make it. Too bad there are no eggs for me...they oversold to the store down the street. One thing I learned: chickens LOVE watermelon rinds.