Monday 14 April 2014

Mountain of jobs the sequel

Despite what the long suffering one says about adding more to the list than we are ticking off I feel like we are making a little progress. The list reduced to 30 at one stage from the 50 originally. However it has crept back up. Those little jobs keep raising their ugly heads. Nothing done seems to stay done. I managed to clear out the living room so I could see the fireplace and it looked lovely for a day. Then my sister decided she would unload a lot of stuff she thought I might find useful. And to be truthful I probably will find it useful, but now we look like a tip again as I have to rearrange my storage to fit it in. Oh joy.

The eggs are rumbling away in the incubator ready for our next hatch on the 24th and I did some candling last night. We have 16 out of 194 not fertile which after a few ways of calculating it I have decided is 92% fertility. Gordon is doing his bit too for my Ausbar crosses, although the White Leghorn hen Isla is a bit too fast for him and those eggs weren't fertile. She obviously has a strategy to dodge him as I can see him trying his best to catch her. I think motoring up the netting like she's on a speedway track is a good tactic. It is keeping him fit anyway. Shame as I wanted the chicks from that crossing as they are lovely looking birds. He does manage to catch her sometimes but not enough for my liking. He managed to catch all of the others as they were all fertile. Good boy Gordon. Like some men, he needs a bit of finesse rather than gung-ho to make himself more alluring to Isla.

I bought a "temporary" incubator which I am now using as a permanent incubator. One of those hexagonal ones that you need to manually turn the eggs in. On my last batch of eggs I had a brainwave. Taking the lid off and twisting all those eggs (over 40) every hour or two was doing my head in. Apart from the losing heat and humidity every time I did it. The time element didnt help either. I wedged all the eggs in and decided to tip the whole incubator 45% one way then the opposite way every couple of hours on a book instead. It worked like a charm. I only got 4 eggs out of 40 not hatching. This time I wedged it full to bursting so I dont have to wedge with cardboard and polystyrene and it means I can do more eggs and less turning. RESULT!!!! All bar 2 non-fertile eggs are growing nicely out of 66.