Little Patch Of Heaven Homestead September 7th 2017 By: Britt Appelle
What started out to being a day to do our much anticipated "cinderblock project" turned into a day that started a path on quail eggs. We were supposed to do our "cinderblock project" on June 8th we had it arranged to pick up an entire pallet of brand new cinderblocks for our project. Sadly the people we were picking them up from sold them out from under us and didn't tell us about the mix up until we pulled up to get the blocks. But that wasn't going to stop us from doing some sort of project or adventure. On the drive home we decided we would jump on our quail project and get some fertilized eggs and start that project a little sooner than we had planned to do it. We thought we knew what we wanted to get and from where. But that option will be ordered next month and started for a review project on the bundle that that company has going. Great deal but we decided to try a trial run and see if this project was going to work for our small back yard homestead (planning to go bigger in the near future).
When we got home we grabbed the trusty laptop and went to eBay. Yes, that's right, eBay. We found loads and loads of eggs and options. Since this was a trial run we decided on a dozen eggs, and to get the Pharaoh eggs. This seller offered 12+ hatching eggs. Free shipping was a bonus, that meant more pennies toward an incubator. I know some of you are thinking that, we have chickens didn't we hatch those ones. No we didn't. Sadly we are not in a zone that is in the city limits where we can have a rooster. But we will get one later on when we get to the new plot. So we placed our order Thursday, June 8th. Then we went to the local everything store and picked up a few things to make our own incubator. That's right we decided to save a little more on this trial run by going DIY. Many of you may already know this, but we enjoy doing lots of DIY things and to recycle things and upcycle them as well. Benefits us and the environment as well.
After our run to the local everything store we started to set up for a film session for our youtube channel but sadly we had some technical issues. It just was not our day that day. But we did get some filmed and some photos done. So we will insert some pictures here and of course add in the link to the video on our youtube channel. Of course we had spent lots of time and I mean lots of time on researching and deciding on what we wanted to go for before we actually decided to do this project earlier than planned. So we knew what we needed to do it DIY or to do it not DIY. With it being a DIY we looked around the garage and scraps of things to see what we had there first. We actually had almost everything already. Which was super cool.
We only ended up picking up the following:
+Small foam cooler - $2.27
+Photo Frame set (2) - $1.97
+Bulb wall socket - $1.27
+Humidity/temperature meter - $7.99
+Mini disposable loaf pans (set of 5) - $0.98
We already had these items so didn't cost us anything extra:
+Tape
+Knives +Black Bulbs (2-CFL @14w each)
+Markers (2)
+Silicone bottomed ice trays
+Heat Pad
+Sponges
+Shelf/drawer grip matting
+Metal meshing (1/2"x1/2")
+Extension cord (heavy duty)
+PC Fan
+Old USB cell phone charger with wall adapter
In the picture you see a standard light bulb, but it didn't work out for what we were trying to do so we opted for the two black lights of 14w each in the CFL kind of bulbs. We also changed the sockets that we used, we didn't want to not be able to turn the lights on or off by having to unscrew a bulb by opening the incubator so we swapped those out with two of our heat lamp sockets we had laying around that weren't in use at this time.
We also used gloves, and continue to use the gloves when we handle the eggs so that way they have less of a chance of slipping from our hands and breaking.
So with that we were all set. We had ordered our eggs. They would be arriving Monday June 12th, which also happened to be my husbands birthday. Yay! So exciting. With the eggs ordered we began to put together the incubator and get it all set up so that the levels would be on point for putting the eggs in the day after they arrived. You should let the eggs rest after shipping so that the eggs air pocket settles at the top (the NOT pointy end) its important for the chicks later on.
My kids decided to put a plain chicken egg from the super market in as an experiment to see what would happen. We recently, in the last couple days, did the candling process of all eggs in the incubator. No sign of life in the chicken egg, but we didn't expect anything to come of that one, even though the eggs always have the fertility target spot on them when they are cracked open. Had one been able to have life would of been a real surprise for us. The quail eggs though, some do have signs of life and others nothing. Below is a picture of a not fertilized egg (left), and a picture of a fertilized egg (right). We are actually thinking of ordering more eggs here soon. We will see what comes of these eggs by July 1st before we officially decide. We saw signs of life inside the eggs in no time at all. We watched as the little vein we saw grew and branched off into a lot more veins.
We watched as the little heart began to beat inside the eggs. We watched as the little eyes began to show through the shells. We watched as we saw the little beaks peak out and the little wings and legs begin to form and move. At soon we reached day 14. It was the last day we would turn the eggs and would begin lock down. On hatching day we saw a pip. We were super excited, and knew that in a matter of hours we would have little fluffy balls of feathers peeping and hoping around the hatcher/incubator we made. We waited. And we waited and waited some more. Everything we read said not to help the little babies, not to open the incubator or hatcher no matter how much we wanted to and we needed to just be patient. And so we waited and every half hour or so we checked in on the little eggs through the view windows.
We waited and finally a baby popped out but something was not right. It was smaller than we saw on our researching and it was basically bald. We quickly ran to find out what had happened for it to be so small and so lacking in feathers. The eyes were not even open and the egg yolk was still very large. The other two babies started to pip and hatch at this point. Another popped out in half the time it took the first to come out. It too was rather small and bald with large yolk sack. The third had make its pip hole but then didn't progress. Our research showed that these little quail hatched too early. But that was impossible with the timeline that we had. We followed everything to the T and had the environment perfect. We do not know why this happened like this but we lost all the babies that hatched and/or tried to hatch. The baby that made its pip hole for first breath got turned round and ended up drowning in its shell. It was the only one that would of been a term hatcher had it not gotten turned wrong side round in the hatching process. So we had no babies and we worked hard to get them to hatch.
We kept trying, we thought it was the source of the eggs so we bought more from several other places. Nothing came our or they were not fertile in the end. The last batch we just finished hatching had a better outcome. We sort of. One babies was thriving and hatched successfully and we were excited. Sadly by the next morning it had passed away for an unknown reason. So we are taking a break from trying to hatch quail. Maybe we will just get a couple breeding trios and cut out the shipping part to see if we fair better on hatching these delicate little birds. We will do another blog post to update that adventure when it gets going. We hope that you enjoyed this blog post.
If you have any comments or questions or anything, feel free to email us, comment down below, or check out our Facebook / YouTube / Instagram / Pinterest pages. Thanks for reading and we hope to see ya'll around the blog as well as our social pages. We'll see ya next time.
Comments