A lesson in chickens

Hello, we have embarked on a new adventure!  We have revved up the incubator and are attempting to hatch our first batch of chickens!

Step 1 was to be sure our eggs are fertilized.  I have only seen Little Roo "get busy" once so we cracked open one of the eggs from yesterday that have not been refrigerated.  This is what I found:

Now look closely at the glare spot on the lower right side of the upper photo.  Now look at the same area on the lower egg with no flash.  You will see a white donut shape in the yoke.

See it?  Since it is a donut and not just a spot then we can assume this is a fertilized egg.  This is called the blastoderm and by the time an egg is layed it has already started dividing to form an embryo.  Interesting isn't it? 

Here is my incubator

And I put the 17 eggs collected over the last 3 days that have not been refrigerated.  Ideally the eggs are kept above 50 degrees for no more than a week for the best hatch rate. 

I have a nice combination of colors:  white, green and various brown.  Eggs hatch at 21 days (give or take a day or two).  Ideally the eggs should come from chickens that are over 12 months.  My girls are not a year yet.  But, we are excited to see how things work!  Keeping our fingers crossed!

The chickens that hatch from these eggs will be raised for meat.  We are not sure exactly what mix breed Little Roo is, I was told he should pass on the olive green egg gene but, no way to know for sure.  If we get a new roo this year when I get my little chickens then I will re-think what roos I want to keep. 

Kinda hard to see what is going on from the top "windows".  the yellow trays rock back and forth with the timer "turning" the eggs for proper chicken development.  At this point we need to keep the temperature at 99 - 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and above 45 % humidity.  Our Incubator is in Celsius so what should the setting be?  (jeopardy theme plays in the background) times up!

If you said 37.5ish then you would be correct!

I will keep you all up to date on how things are going.  I do have a candle light so I will be attempting to learn to candle the eggs as time goes by!