My new incubator finally hatched my first chicks for me!  Mixed results, but the incubator performed very well!  The water reservoir that comes with it is very big and plugs in, so it made the humidity go way too high, so I took it out and put in an ice cream tub of water and that was fine while the eggs were incubating, then when they went into the hatching basket, I replace the water reservoir but didn't plug it in.

My resulting chicks were 12 of the 14 Appenzellars I put in, but only got 4 of the 12 Light Sussex one of those died yesterday, and only 2 of the 13 Rhode Island Red eggs hatched.  I left the unhatched ones in until Wednesday, then opened them.  4 had dead chicks in but the rest were just a mess!

I don't think it was me, as the temperature and humidity stayed god all through, and the incubator wasn't dirty as it was new, and I did wash it out before I used it.

But now I've just got 10 Appenzellar eggs in there which are due out on Saturday.  I put those in the see if they would hatch bearing in mind the humidity was higher for the last 6 days due to the fact that I had the other eggs in the hatching basket.

So my little stock of babies is growing, and I'm already getting requests for pure breeds, even though my own breeding stock aren't old enough to start laying eggs yet!!!

Here is a photo of some of the babies!

There is an Appenzellar, 2 LS and one Rhode Island Red chick there!

Some of the Appenzellars!

My Brian was making a new house for Rocky, but as the chicks that my friend Debbie hatched for me are getting bigger, we put them in the new little house yesterday and Brian made a nice big run for them too!

I'm going to put netting over the top to stop them flying out!

This coop was made completely out of recycled wood!