Henny Penny and Future Friends

Yea what Tam said and how many are you getting this time. Why dont you want the roo's again?

OK. Chicken Lore. (And Josh I COULDN'T figure out how to bock it right -that's why I let Claire take over...)

[Courtesy of the local BirdMan](not me)
Get a wash cloth, a sewing needle with about 8" of thread, a steady table and the egg you want to test. Place the egg on the folded washcloth on the table, pointy end ever-so-slightly downwards. Thread the needle and double the thread so that you are holding about 4" of thread + needle. Suspend this (by hand) about 1/4 to 1/2 inch above the surface of the fattest portion of the egg. Don't move or sneeze or heavy breath in expectation, BUT. The needle should (1)start to move in circles for a fertilized male (2)start to move back and forth in a line for a fertilized female (3) stay in place and not move unless you make it for an unfertilized or non-viable egg.

I have tried this, though never hatched by it (DH sold the eggs!!) If you hold the needle too far off the fat end of the egg, you will always get circles. If you get excited or had too much coffee, the eggs are always fertile. Birdman claims a 90+% success rate in sexing before hatch with this method. He is known for his successes, though not specifically for this method(that I know of). This agrees with a great deal of Chinese medicine , chi, ki, and other lore about the electromagnetic field that pertains to the human body...

I plan on trying this out next time I incubate in early spring.

There was someone on Ebay who was selling that method--of course they didn't describe it exactly.

Just checked another version: elliptical=males; circles=females!

Still think it is the old 50/50 --you'll be right.

This message was edited Aug 17, 2008 11:53 AM

This sounds roo much like waterwitching and playing with Ouija!
Check out this guide to candling eggs: http://shilala.homestead.com/candling.html

Mmm. I know there's electromagnetism in life and it would be VERY nice to be able to tell beforehand. Sooo. I am suspending total disbelief until I check it out for myself. Thought if I chose eggs that way at a 3-4 to 1(roo) ratio for next years hatchings I might get an idea how totally nuts this is.

Besides, sometimes it's fun to suspend disbelief.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could sex 'em
Then we wouldn't have to wait so looong
And wouldn't it be nice to hatch together
In the kind of world where we belong

You know its gonna make it that much better
When we can pick and choose and haatch whatever

You know it seems the more we talk about it
It only makes it worse to liiive without it
But lets taaalk about it
Oh Wouldnt it be nice.....bockbockbockboock

Wouldn't it make more sense if circles were female?

Ack!!! What if it worked and I ended up with 4 lovely roosters to one hen!! Noooo...

Grownut - Thanks, now I will have the beach boys in my head for the rest of the day! You are very creative!

I am slightly freaked out by the needle/thread method but I will certainly investigate.

I will also look into candling. We have an LED flashlight and it looks like that would work!

Soorry Claire...This weather makes me want to sing......and I've chicken on the brain!!

Oh, I forgot to respond to the chicken fairy's question. I mean TF's question.

Yes, if the hens are sitting on any eggs when I get there to pick them up, I will transport the hen with the eggs she is sitting on. If there are hens sitting on hatched chicks, I will try to get those too. One problem is that the hens lay eggs up in the rafters. There is a space between the rafters and the wall. If you disturb the hen and the chicks are active, they will jump up onto the rafter and down on the side of the wall. If that happens, they will die because there is no way to get to them without cutting holes in the wall. So I will try my best to rescue as many chicks as possible. On the last batch of 9 chicks (from Allie), we lost 3 down the wall. It's horrible to me but the farm owners sort of take it as "nature in action." They don't have any nest boxes. The hens just lay anywhere and they seem to prefer the rafters.

Here are some pix of the coop for them that we are building.

This is the nest box set up I made for them. I am going to paint it blue and burgundy. This is just primer. It has industrial grade vinyl flooring in the bottoms for easy cleanup.

This is the second nest boxes I made, and it's portable, whereas the others will be fixed in place inside the coop.

Here is the run that I made. DBF next to it. He helped me with the end. It's made with an 8 x 8 frame of 2x4 wood that I drilled holes into for the PVC pipes. I made a center board with holes drilled out for stability to hold the hoops. I put chicken wire over the hoops and laced it together. We just need to finish up on the sliding door.

And here is the coop in progress. Kelly designed it. It will have doors in both ends for egg collection from the back of the nest boxes, plus a larger door for us to go in for cleanout. It has a drawer for catching poo that pulls out. It has a nice window that we got from the Habitat for Humanity restore that sells construction materials to the general public to raise $ for HFH. It's a nice sliding window, double glazed, for $20! It will add light and ventilation. So there will be a total of 6 nest boxes. The coop will attach to the run.

Wow! You MUST be contagious at this point. Nice work considering that high grade chicken fever you're running! ;-)

He's currently in the process of installing the large (770 lb capacity) industrial casters we bought onto the bottom of the coop. It's gotta be mobile!

I'm inside with a cool cloth on my forehead, researching incubators and trying to get rid of this blasted chicken fever!!

LOL!

wow! I want that WORKSHOP! lol!

LOL AnjL. That's a 30 by 60 foot Wick building that is on my property. DBF loves it. And I love the space for all my gardening toys. :-)

Plus it's a useful place for chicken houses on a really cold night!

That is my dream. Acreage with a small house and huge outbuildings!

It was my dream too, Catscan, and finally it came true. It's a walkout ranch house - I love its openness and the fact that it's situated behind a rise, so I don't get the gravel road dust everywhere, and it's so very quiet. It probably doesn't qualify as small though, it's about 4000 sq ft. But truly, I love, love, LOVE the land. I love that I can hear cows when I walk outside in the morning. I love the pond on my land even though I have a naughty beaver who chews down trees. And I love having all that space for my CHICKENS!!!! LOL!!! I would take a house half this size to stay on this land. It really is a dream for me.

well when my DH saw sis (pea fowl anjl) property in WA... he fell in love with the area...mainly because they have enough land to have HUGE workshops! :o) tee hee!
so thats where we are headed in 3 yrs :oD

what can i say, Claire, WELL DONE!

dont' forget to consider that since you have a pond, you will eventually ahve predotrs such as coons... make everything tight, and use latches that require opposable thumbs...

i am so glad you are rescuiong these hens and chicks, what terrible conditions they have! at first i got squeamish thinking you were going to post pics of where they came from YUCK!

guess i ought to pu tin a good word for you to the CF. like help getting good incubators?

EXCELLENT site potagere!

grownut, thanks for sticking that song in my head at this hour. i will be paying you back.

and someone just the other day was cliaming that trick worked on sexing eggs, only i assumed she meant with a gold ring on a gold chain, like you do with preganant humans. it is a latte rof picking up the heartbeat. even with sonos, they can see their is a difference in the avg heartrate. BUT, i was told circles for hens, ellipses for roos.... SO, who can find out for SURE>....?

so u will already get broody ready and made LOL lucky u

Thanks TF - any good word on incubators with the CF would do wonders for me!!

I was looking them up on eBay yesterday but they're all pretty much the same, and not really 2nd hand - just the usual little giant and hovabators.

Look up "Brinsea", Claire. The Cadillac of incubators and about as pricey. You can hatch anything in them.

speaking of which you will also need a hatcher, and one egg turner for each bator...

I had planned on the turners. What is the hatcher?

Isnt that where to chicks go after hatching or during hatching?

you can use a bator without a turner for hatching... so many ways to do it, bu ti got the best deal buying a "set", bator, turner, hatcher... which is a forced air bator without the turner. move the eggs in there at hatching time. that way you can have multiple sets going at once, a must with a small flock. and you have better control over humidity and cleanliness. many chicks die quickly due to bacteria left from a previous hatch. so more than one hatcher could be an option too... always have one cleaned, but NO FUMES... they have to air out after cleaning befor eyou can use it again...

by not hatching in your bator, you reduce the risk of bacteria, as long as you faithfully cull all bad eggs... befor ethey explode...

allright, you poor thing, that was TMI... find some old hatching htreads, starting with mcamden's "my homemade bator"

tf

Hmmmm....well......I just bought the R-Com 20 digital 'bator from Brinsea since Catscan suggested their products. I liked that model. It turns automatically. I also bought the cosy-brooder lamp thing from Brinsea. I'll get some of the special cleaner for the bator I guess....

Claire

do you have a web site for them.

Incubator
http://www.brinsea.com/products/rcom20.htm

Brooder
http://www.brinsea.com/detail.aspx?ID=22

thanks hun

I will not click that link!
I will not click that link!
I will not click that link!

anyone got a spare cf patch? quick!

*click!