Farm Smarts: The Great Chicken Adventure: Day 21

Today is hatching day! And indeed they have been hatching - steady since 12PM last night. There are currently 26 that have hatched, out of the 42. Apparently a 50% hatch rate is good, and Im so fortunate to have (so far) attained and surpassed that! After chick #7 hatched yesterday at 10:30AM, there wasn't anymore action until 6PM, when we had 7 eggs with cracks in their shells. By 8:45PM we had a chick #8, and in quick pursuit was chick #9 at 9PM. Chick #9 I had been watching throughout the day, he had a crack in his shell at 10AM and no action after that, except I could see his beak moving in the small hole he had made. I was afraid I would have to try picking him out by the evening if he didn't continue to hatch - but he hatched after all! At 12 PM we had a total of 12 chicks, all seemingly healthy. I got up throughout the night every two hours, and I got lots of surprises. I guess you can never estimate when they will hatch - morning or night. On my 2AM check, I found chick #13 and chick #14 fully hatched in the incubator. They looked quite stable, not wobbly and confused like when they first hatch, so I assume they had been hatched for over an hour. I put them in the "ICU" box and transferred the ones in there to the main box, and stumbled back to bed. On my 4AM check there weren't any hatched, and the birds in the box were all happily sleeping. On my 6AM check I was surprised to find a lovely brown chick! All the eggs were supposed to be Buff Orpingtons, and I think this one is, but maybe just with a recessive gene to produce dark feathers. By this time in the morning the water was soiled AGAIN, and full of food. I went back to bed for a couple of hours and woke up before my 8AM alarm went off and I was up just in time to see chick #16 hatch. I had a couple of chores to do, so I left chick #16 in the incubator for a little while to dry off - there were signs of another soon to hatch. I threw in a load of laundry and fed the other cats and when I came back the incubator had 3 fully hatched chicks out and about! I put them in the "ICU" - but there were so many chicks now, I decided to get their upgraded home ready. I borrowed a chinchilla cage from friends with 4 stacked cages - I lined the cages with newpaper and some hay, put in the larger waterers as well as the temporary ones that I put in last night. It was quite a juggling act to get the heat lamps set up over the new cage and get both boxes of chicks transferred into the cage without anyone getting cold. I ended up putting everyone in one box under one heat lamp, rigged up the first heat lamp, then move all the chicks into the new cage, rigged up the second heat lamp (to the second level of the cage) and then moved the stronger chicks into the second level. Chick #19 made its way out at 9:15AM and then there was a lull. Between 11 and 12AM two more chicks hatched and another one was brown! Around noon until 2PM five more chicks hatched bringing the total up to 26! We've had lots of visitors and the chicks are getting well handled. Right now theres another chick half way through hatching. By this evening or tomorrow morning, the remaining eggs will have to be picked out, any survivors will probably be weak and theres quite a chance that several are infertile or for whatever reason just didn't develop. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there, as for now, here are some snapshots of the fluffballs.

<-- These are the 1-2 day olds