Hatching Eggs

We have 13 Black Australorps, and two Rhode Island Reds. Our one Rooster is a Black Australorp. The reason we have a rooster, is we wanted sustainable chickens producing their own offspring. From my understanding, as long as we swap out the rooster every few generations, we will be fine in the genetics area. Our first foray into hatching eggs, we wanted the chickens to do it naturally. We marked the eggs that we wanted to let them hatch and put them in the same nesting box. They kept disappearing. We found the chickens were taking them out. I have no idea if it is to reduce competition or what. Our next attempt at hatching eggs was with the purchase of a still air incubator. We read the directions and tried to do everything right. Turned the eggs three times a day until day 18, monitored the humidity per the directions, keeping it at 55 for the first 18 days and 70 for the last three. We kept the temperature to around 100 per the directions. Out of 30 eggs, only one hatched, and it was early, had it's yolk sack outside of it's body and a gimpy leg and died after a couple of days. It was heartbreaking. After my daughter said, "Mom, you aren't going to try again?", I thought that setting a good example was more important than my fear of failure (she's 18 and at an age that I needed her to know she could try again). So I did some more studying, took some advice from my husband about lowering the temperature, and made some adjustments. I lowered the temperature to 97/98, added no extra humidity until day 18, and only turned them once a day until day 18. Additionally, i took our both plastic plugs on day one and left them out for more air circulation. Out of 19 eggs, 9 hatched. This may sound low, but I did not candle them and take out the eggs that were not developing, as most people do. When everyone is still working full time and trying to get a new farm working, life happens and not everything gets done. I figured the worst case scenario was that I would be getting rid of the eggs eventually anyway. We have been told that one rooster servicing 14 hens was not enough, but we do not want another rooster, so were willing to take our chances. Our main goal with our chickens is to produce more fertilizer for getting our dirt into shape. The eggs are also great, but we need to find a market for the extras (it's not easy in a rural area even if they are free range.) Right now, our neighbors and fellow employees love us for giving them eggs. We don't have to buy a lot of chicken feed as they are free range, but are trying to cut down, at last year it added up to over $350. I can't seem to convince my husband to not feed them, but we need some reason for them to go back to the chicken coop to lay their eggs. I read about sprouting lentils in the winter time, and this would be a good use for our greenhouse when there are not plants in it, so I may try that next winter. Cute Results:

Hatched chicks are so much fun and they sure are cute. We had one chick that was hatched with curled toes. I researched this on the internet and found a consensus that if taken care of early, the chicks' toes can straighten out. We tried the cardboard sandal with vet wrap. It was not possible to do for me even with someone to hold the chick. Between how tiny the chick was and trying to wrap the vet wrap around its tiny toe while the chick of course would not hold still, didn't work. Then I looked for another solution and found the suggestion of thick sturdy tape. We always have duct tape, so I gave it a shot. Now the chick is running around sporting one duck flipper. It started out with two, but one foot wasn't so bad and it seemed to be slipping with the duct tape. Sadly, we have named it "gimpy". We will probably love this chick best of all. . .