Pip
Yesterday was day 19 with the eggs in the incubator, time to take them out of the automatic turner and lay them out for hatching, which happens at (usually) 20 or 21 days. Actually, day 18 is the correct day to do that, but I went stupid in my remembering (Alabama native, remember?) and left them in the turner a little longer than I should’ve because I got it in my fool head that day 19 was the right day. I don’t think it will hurt, because they were only in about 12 hours longer than they needed to be, and I think nature tends to be pretty resilient.
I also added more water to the incubator so the humidity would go up. If the humidity is off — if you’re not accurately representing the environment under a chicken’s ass — the chick can have problems. If it’s too low, the membrane around the chick can dry out, and the chick might not be able to get out of it. If humidity is too high, the chicks can drown in their shells. Generally, you’re looking for humidity around 58%-60% for the first 18 days, and about 70% for the last three.
I wish I knew how a mother hen makes her ass more humid at the end, because that seems like it would be a good thing to know how to do at parties.
While I was looking in the incubator to make sure the temperature and humidity were climbing back up after I put the lid on, I saw the coolest thing: one of the eggs moved. Just a little jiggle, really, but it moved.
Contrary to the beliefs of my wife, I had no trouble sleeping last night.
This morning when I woke up, I beelined to the incubator and found:
We have pips!
You might wish to check back periodically over the day; if anything happens with the eggs, I’ll post new updates at the bottom of the entry. It can take up to 24 hours between pip and hatch, so it’s kind of slow going.
Three things:
a) I have no plans to shoot any dogs.
b) If I did shoot one, I sure as shit wouldn’t write about it.
c) Someone very evil (who shall remain nameless) promised to be nice to me for a week if I would put up a picture of a dead dog and claim I shot it. I was all set to post this picture (WARNING: GRAPHIC) — which I found by searching Google Images for “dead beagle” — with the caption “Problem solved” and a “just kidding” WAY down the page, but Robyn stopped me because she knows when my sense of humor will be unappreciated.
And now, one for my chicks, and the Gob in all of us.
Update (8:35 am) : No update. I got Robyn to pull the vent plug out of the ‘bator, and the humidity is dropping to a more acceptable level.
This video sums up my feelings right now:
Update: (9:37 am) : Two more eggs have pipped, and when the incubator fan is off, you can hear a peep cheeping.
One of the eggs from above has progressed.
A new pip.
Update: (5:38 pm) : Nine total are pipping now. I can see something moving from time to time inside one of the first ones to start, and there’s plenty of cheeping going on.
Update: (9:02 pm) : Say hello to number one. 
