This Winters Avalanche Pictures ~ Sequence Shots

I've been meaning to post these pictures for quite a while now.  These were actually taken March 23rd, so I guess it was technically spring.   What a beautiful day it had turned out to be.  Just the kind of day that is perfect to watch them blast the snow off the mountain.  

I had my niece staying over and my girls and I all went out and stood near the tracks in front of the house to watch the show.  

The explosives were dropped off a helicopter onto the face of the mountain.  First you see a little plume of dark smoke, then seconds later the sound hits you and you could hear a huge BANG!  Then the snow starts to tumble down the mountain.  Of course this was all very exciting for the kids, and as they watched the cloud of snow grow they were a little worried it might reach us.  But of course we were at a very safe distance. 

Still, it is a wonderful sight to behold!  It's one of my favorite things about winters out here.

I took this picture before they started blasting.  

This is after they blasted.  You can see not as much of the cornus came off as they would have liked.

What a view!  

Let the hatching begin!

Last night I figured I would test out my new candler I made to fit over my husbands big flash light and I had a surprise!  The first egg I picked up peeped!  I thought I was hearing things, because after all, I gave them the hatch date of March 19th and that is not until Monday.  I had a closer look at the egg in my hand and sure enough there was a pip!

Of course, my curiosity got the better of me, and since I had my home made candler set up right there, I had to pop it on to get a look at it!  Usually I don't candle during lock down. Usually it's right before I put them in lock down to remove any dead eggs.

Turns out that I counted wrong when I gave them their hatch date.  I recounted, and the 'new' date is supposed to be March 15th.  I counted several times to be sure this time.  So the eggs are actually starting to pip on day 19!

There was one polish egg pipped and one cochin egg pipped, as well as peeping coming from an Easter Egger egg.  You can only imagine my excitement and surprise!

Broken into the Air Cell.  Polish Egg.

This one isn't there yet.  You can still see the blood vessels in this one.  It was alive and moving around.

Cochin egg, into the air cell.

This is an egg that has not been incubated.  Freshly laid.

So I took the racks out and put them on their sides.  I usually would put them fat sides up in an egg carton for hatching, but didn't want to take the extra time to do this with the lid off.  So I hope this changing of position at this stage doesn't have a bad effect on them.  

I also put added more water to the water troughs and a couple wet sponges to try and up the humidity.  The humidity has been about 40% lately.  It went up to 55%, and a little while ago I cracked the bottom open and squirted some warm water in there to try and up it more.  I hope it isn't to dry in there.

Oh, Yay!  Just now as I was typing, I heard exciting peeping and went and checked, and there was an Easter Egg chick out of it's egg.  I checked about 15 minutes before, and it just had a fair sized hole pecked!  And the polish egg that I first saw pipped last night is starting to zip!  

Here's the first Chick!  An Easter Egger wins the race!

The polish egg that was pipped last night started to zip right after the Easter Egger hatched.

And zips some more...

A little more zipping, and it gives a stretch...

It gets it's foot up...

And out...

Getting ready for the big shove...

At last it lifts it's head.

Hatching is hard work...

Stretching the wings for the first time!

And at last the Easter Egger chick has a friend!

As of now there are 4 hatched, and 23 eggs left to go!

Let the hatching begin!!!!

Thought I would add a picture of my home made candler.

Incubation, Day 8

Last night, I unplugged the incubator and carried it into the darkest room in my house at night (The bathroom), to do a little candling.  

For Candling I use my big Mega Light.  I don't have a Candler yet, but this seems to work ok.  Some eggs I find hard to see through, like dark shelled eggs, and the Easter Egger Eggs.

When I candle, I shine the light through the fat end of the egg, and sort of rotate the egg and tilt it a bit to see what's going on in there.  At this stage, you can see blood vessles, and a dark shape in there.  As I watched I could see the dark shape moving around.  It's pretty neat, and gets more exciting as the eggs grow.  Candling can be addictive.

So This is what I had, and what I have now.

Started with:                                       Fertile:

6 Easter Eggers                                    3(?) Easter Eggers (the shells are hard to see though, so I left them all in)

11 Phyllis Diller (Polish X Frizzle)         8 Phyllis Diller

10 Cochin                                            8 Cochin

6 Blue Laced Red Wyandotte              5 Blue Laced Red Wyandotte

9 Polish                                               7 Polish

4 Silkie X                                            0

4 Silkie                                                2 Silkie

So, I'm not sure what happened with the Silkie X's.  I had a bantam cochin X in with Rotten Ronnie, and he was giving it for all he was worth with her and the little silkie.  I know that perhaps I should have given a few days more before I started collecting eggs (for all the breeds), so the first ones I collected didn't surprise me about not being fertile.

I was most surprised to see that the Blue Laced Red Wyandotte eggs were growing.  I really wasn't expecting it.  My roo got so frost bit this winter on his feet that I thought it would make mating hard for him.  But I guess where there is a will there is a way, and Frosty is able to do his job.  I'm really excited about this!

After I candled, I filled all of the water trays back up, put the incubator back on the turner and got it going again.

In my last post I was having temperature troubles.  Well, I turned the temperature up a bit at a time, until it reached a good temperature.  It seems to be holding quite well now.  I'm not sure why it had the drop, but I hope it stays good now.  As for the clicking, I tried the vaseline on the pin that holds the incubator, and haven't heard a click since!  I am really, really happy about this!

Incubator Issues

Last night I did a quick candle of the eggs in my incubator.  It looks like most of the Polish and Polish X Frizzle eggs are growing.  Some of the others, the shells are too dark for me to see through very well, yet.  Mind you it's only day four.

Since I have put the eggs in, I have been having trouble with humidity.  I just can't seem to keep it up.  The Brinsea Octagon 40 has four slots in the bottom, and you are supposed to fill two of them up with water and keep topping them up until lock down.  I had the vent closed 2/3rd of the way.  And still the humidity would not go up.  It was staying at 25 - 30%.  I tried closing the vent all the way.  No Change.  I also noticed that the temperature went down one degree to 99.5 (was about 100.5).

So last night I did my candle, and topped up all four of the water slots with very warm water.  Put the lid back on and crossed my fingers.  After a few hours, before I went to bed, I checked my incubator and noticed that the temperature varied.  I have 3 different thermometers in my incubator.  I thought this was because I had the lid off and it was still catching up in temperature.  The humidity was reading 60% with all 4 slots filled with very warm water and the vent closed all the way.

This morning I got up and checked my incubator. and was surprised to see that the temperature was still reading low, so I turned it up slightly.  One (the Spot Check) has the probe sitting in between the eggs about centre of the egg.  One is sitting on top of the eggs, and the other is stuck on the lid about half way up the lid.  All three thermometers are now giving me entirely different readings.  The lowest (in the eggs) is reading 97.8, the middle one is 98.3 and the highest is 99.0 degrees.  It's been a few hours now, and still no change to the temperature, so I just turned it up a little more.  Also the humidity is back down to 40%.  

Oh, did I mention that the turner is clicking?  I noticed it last fall when I did a test hatch but thought it might be because it was new and working out kinks.  But it is still clicking and worse now.  It clicks ever 5 - 20 seconds.  I've tried to re- adjust the incubator on the turner, WD40ing it.  It sounds the same when the incubator has eggs in it or empty.  I contacted the company and my clicking issue has been sent to the top guys, and I haven't heard back from them.  The clicking is quite loud, so that we can hear it upstairs in our bedroom with the door shut.

I feel rather sick about the whole thing, because I have wanted a good incubator for so long and it was a big deal for me to get this one.  And I really had to talk my husband into it, saying that Brinsea were top notch incubators.  I haven't mentioned to my husband the temperature issue that has risen yet.  He was all for sending it back last year when it arrived without the digital control, and again the other day when we got it going, and it was clicking again.

Ohhhhh what shall I do?  This is only the second time I have used this incubator.  

Fired up the Incubator!

Last fall, I ordered a new incubator.  A lovely Brinsea Octagon 40 with a turner.  I did a test hatch with some Easter Egger eggs and found it worked better then my Hovabator.  Eight out of the Twelve eggs hatched.  In the past I was getting about half of the eggs hatch in the Hovabator. 

It's been a long winter, waiting to use my incubator again.  I keep my hens and roosters in different coops during the winter, so that come spring, I can pair up birds and start collecting eggs after only a few days.  This has worked well for me.

So, I paired up some roo's and hens into their breeding pens, and let the loving begin.  A few days later I started collecting eggs.  

I fired up the incubator on February 23rd.  

Incubation for chicken eggs takes about 21 days, at 99 - 103 F degrees.  Sometimes, I find that small banty eggs will hatch a little sooner, then the big ones.

Into the incubator I popped 

6 Easter Egger Eggs

6 Blue Laced Red Wyandotte

11 Phyllis Diller Eggs (Frizzle X Polish)

10 Barred Cochin Eggs

1 Cochin X Blue Laced Red Wyandotte Egg (She quit laying when I paired her up with the Roo)

9 Polish Eggs

4 Silkie Eggs

4 Silkie X Eggs

Which brings me to 50 beautiful eggs.

March 19th the eggs should hatch.  Last night I candled some Polish eggs, because they have white shells and are easy to see.  After only 4 days, I could see development, in most of the eggs!  I tried a few darker shelled eggs like the Easter Egger and Cochin Eggs, but am unable to see anything through those shells yet.  I'm not sure how many of them will be fertile though, because I may have started collecting a little soon.  Also my Blue Laced Red Wyandotte rooster, has frost bitten feet, and is very clumsy at mating, so I don't know just how successful he is, but I couldn't resist putting some eggs in anyways.

The Temperature is holding nicely at 99.5 - 100.5 F degrees.  But, I am having trouble getting the humidity up.  It's sitting right around 30%, (Should be 50-55%) which is strange, because the humidity in my house reads 43%.  I would have thought given the warm conditions, added water, and evaporation, that the humidity would be higher in the incubator.  I even have the vent, all the way closed, to try and up it.  Tonight I am going to candle again and I will try adding water to another slot in the bottom of the incubator and see if that doesn't bring it up. 

Yes, tonight I will candle and have another little look and see if I can't tell better who is growing and who is not.  It will be easier with the light eggs, such as the Polish, silkie and X's.  I will get rid of a few if I can't see growth to make some room in the incubator.  What am I making room for, you ask?  Well, my neighbour is going to run me down some quail eggs she has going in her incubator!  I'm so excited!