Nr.1 von 10 ist geschlüpft

OMG, how cute!!!

How cute!
My neighbor is also in full brooding mode right now. She’s already hatched a few—they’re so funny

Awesome. :-)


No. 2

Is that a special chick incubator?

It’s an incubator, so in principle you can hatch all kinds of eggs (including reptile eggs) in it.

How cute. I see eggs of different colors. I'm so happy for you. 

@Nina,
how often do you incubate eggs with the incubator?

@Josefa:
I only hatched quail eggs once last year. So these chicken chicks are now my second hatch.

@Petra:
Yes, they’re different breeds—Green Layers, Marans, White Leghorns... One “regular” brown hybrid chicken (the yellow one), two Marans, and one Green Layer have hatched.

So cute! Our neighbors have hatched some runner ducks, and now they’re busily pecking around in our garden too, eating up all the snails!

@Nina,
are you going to keep the chicks and raise them?

@Josefa:
Yes, they’re being raised here.
However, as soon as the roosters start crowing, I’ll either give them away or—those of a sensitive disposition, look away now 😉—my husband will have to slaughter them. Unfortunately. But I can’t keep roosters here.

Crowing roosters aren't a good idea—I totally get that.
Are you raising chickens for the eggs or for your kids?

Both.
I think it’s very important for children to grow up around animals and to learn that there are not only pets (like dogs and cats) but also farm animals.
Of course, we have waaaay more eggs than we can use, but we also have many grateful people around us who are happy to take some of our good eggs (from chickens and quails).
And while we all find it a shame that the animals have to be slaughtered from time to time, our animals have had a very good life up until then.

Okay, I can see why.
Have they all hatched by now?

6 have hatched; 3 have started to peck their way out and will surely hatch in the next few hours. Whether the 10th one will hatch, I’m rather skeptical about right now.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you.

Nina, that’s so cute! You’re like the chicks’ mom, since you’ll be the first one they’ve ever seen. It’s a shame, really, that they don’t have a mom of their own kind. But it’s basically a nice idea. I couldn’t bring myself to slaughter them, though, and I wouldn’t eat them either.

@Monika:
Some of the eggs were actually supposed to be incubated by one of our hens, who had been sitting on them for ages. But after a week of brooding, she apparently got bored and stopped...
So now another hen is sitting on them. We just picked up some more hatching eggs for her earlier; she’ll get them tomorrow. Maybe this hen will be more persistent 😂—otherwise, the eggs will end up in the incubator too...

Oh... that weird sequence of numbers was actually a woman shrugging her shoulders 😂

That’s definitely exciting. How many chickens do you have now? And how much space do that many chickens need? I might also find these birds fascinating, but unfortunately (or thank goodness), our yard is too small.

  We enjoy watching birds in the garden. Here on our patio, sparrows were nesting in the awning. After a short while, we always have to go inside, otherwise the mom can’t come to feed them. We’re happy when they leave the nest and we get to watch them for a few more days as fledglings that can’t fly yet.

  But chickens are really great when they take dust baths, peck for grain, and cluck. It’s wonderful for your kids to get to experience that.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the 10th egg, too, hoping it gets hatched. 

Oh, sorry, I’m just reading this now, dear Petra...
We currently have 14 adult chickens ranging in age from about 10 months to 3.5 years.
They have a spacious stone coop with about 10 square meters of floor space and about 60 square meters of outdoor space...plus, they like to break out every now and then and then make full use of the remaining roughly 940 square meters of garden 😂
I also have 5 quail hens and one quail rooster (they don’t crow 😉).
The 3 young hens are also home-hatched, meaning they’re the daughters of the rooster and the other two hens. They live in separate enclosures to prevent inbreeding. In a few weeks, a rooster and two hens will join the little ones, and then we’ll hatch more eggs there as well (unfortunately, quails hardly ever hatch their own eggs in captivity, so artificial incubation is the only option).

With a 940-square-meter garden, your chickens really have a paradise. 14 chickens is a nice number—there’s always something going on, and with your different breeds, it makes for a colorful scene. Quails are a great option, of course, as long as the rooster doesn’t crow. When we sold our rabbit hutch, it was bought by quail owners. They said there was plenty of room for their three quails and that it offered good protection at night against martens and foxes.

Has the last chick hatched yet?

Wow, Nina, you guys must have your hands full with so many chickens. It’s funny that the hens get bored while brooding. Do they end up accepting their chicks after all? They need a mom to teach them everything, don’t they? In any case, as you can see, you guys certainly won’t get bored. :-) Your chickens really have it good. And it’s really great for the kids to grow up around animals. I see that with my granddaughters—they live on a farm with horses, rabbits, chickens, and cats.