THE END OF JUNE--THE END OF HATCHING

The temperature here is 99 degrees in the shade! I live in a little valley about 12 miles from the coast to the north and about 7 miles from Tillamook Bay to the south. I had to laugh at the temperature given for Nehalem on my computer: it gives the temperature as 66 degrees! But that is for the City of Nehalem, which is about eight miles to the north of here. I did drive in to Nehalem this morning and it was definitely cooler than at my house.

It is so hot outside,that I decided to cancel my plans to inventory my chickens, and decided to start packing away my incubators in my office/computer room, where I hatch and brood chicks for a few days before I transfer them out to bigger brooders. The room definitely needs cleaning.  I would be through hatching eggs by now but I decided to try an experiment. I read in "The Small-Scale Poultry Flock, by Harvey Ussery; How long can you store an egg before it looses its hatchability? He says about two weeks, which is about the time it takes a hen to get her clutch of eggs ready for setting. To be conservative he says ten days. My incubator bible says 4 days.

But the author tells a story of a woman who had sold all her eggs when a fox killed her prize cock. Desperate, this woman went to her customers and asked if they had any of her eggs left. From the refrigerators of her customers she gathered enough eggs to try and salvage that particular line of chicken. And she had an excellent hatch rate! What! I exclaimed as I read this. Well, by golly I am going to try this too! And so my remaining incubator is full of "Fridge" eggs! I have no dates but some will be as old as two weeks of that I am sure. 

                                                             

Charlie chicken says"I'm hidin' - she aint putting me in no fridgerator!