Every year, we’ve bought baby meat chicks to raise to butcher and have gotten real tired of them being so DUMB and hardly able to walk. It didn’t seem natural. So last spring, we bought some baby Cornish and White Rock chicks. This spring we put the Cornish hens with a White Rock rooster and after a month we started saving eggs. Our project this spring included buying a small incubator with and egg turner. We didn’t know if we could run one off-grid, but we decided to give it a try. It worked great!

Our first batch was due to start hatching yesterday, but Saturday morning a sudden loud peeping startled us. Sure enough, our first chick was hatched! We were as excited as new parents. Of course, we didn’t have our Mickey Mouse brooder going yet. So Will quickly pulled in an unused fiberglass stock tank and hooked our little Sunflower propane heater up while I rounded up a chick feeder and waterer. In an hour, the first five chicks had hatched and were dry. And the brooder was up and running in the greenhouse. I added wood shavings, a full waterer and feeder, then we put in the first batch of babies. They are continuing to hatch very well and this morning, we only have five out of 32 eggs that have not hatched yet.

Besides the White Rock/Cornish crosses, we also hatched some Cuckoo Marans and a couple of my Americaunas for fun. The Cuckoo Manans have a dark chocolate egg and are also a big meat bird, too.

As soon as the brooder is empty, we’ll clean and disinfect it well, then start a batch of turkey eggs. Our turkeys aren’t laying as well as we had hoped, so we’ll be brooding less eggs than planned, but we’ve also got some under a broody hen in the chicken coop. We’re real tickled to be getting even more self-reliant; no more chick-buying for us! — Jackie