In may of 2024 my husband and I decided to purchase an incubator in the hopes of hatching some cute silkie chicks for our son to enjoy. We bought eggs from local breeders to hatch along with sticking some layer mixes from our own farm in. As a busy family with my husband working third shift and my self pregnant and chasing a toddler we needed something hands off and easy to use with little maitence.
This incubator has an automatic egg turner and alarms that go off when the temperature gets too high or low. We never had a too high warning but the alarm would go off when we took off the top to check the eggs. It included an automatic gravity water for humidity but we found it was too much and would just manually add water as needed. We filled the incubator with 36 eggs and wound up with 18 silkie chicks and 4 layer mixes.
The hatching net fit under the rollers so we were able to stagger hatching dates and keep the incubator full after candling and tossing out duds.
This incubator was fantastic for our family during this season. We set the eggs and were able to be hands off until hatch time! Big win for a busy and tired mom.
The chicks are now a couple weeks old and doing well! It won’t be long until we are building a new chicken coop for them. For now they are in a modified version of the barngeek covered chicken coop run plans in the free chicken coop library. All we did was leave off the nesting boxes and its a warm and cozy coop for our tiny babies. Check out the free chicken coop plans library here.
Read More about raising chickens and homesteading here
Free Chicken Coop Plans
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3×4 chicken coop with solar power
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Chicken Coops and Care
Plush house for the girls
Project by Karen in Suffolk, england I found your plans and decided to use them for my new chicken house, as they seemed so simple. I changed the width and used old scrap wood for most of the build, mainly an old shed and some fencing I had sitting around. The only...
Chicken coop in Virginia
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Plans were Great! Love our Coup.
Project by Owain Elliott-Sowaal in Pacifica, CA, USA The Plans were great. I started it with my 3 year old daughter, trying to involve her. It was quite a fun project, but I pretty much did it alone. I did modify the plans a bit. I wanted the coop to be taller. I...
Tim’s Coop
Project by Tim in Tracy, CA I have 8 four week old chicks and needed a coop I could build on a weekend. I used the plans and made some minor adjustments. Thank you for having these plans on the net. It was perfect and exactly what I was looking for. Tim racy, CA
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