For quite a while now, I've been wanting to add to my puny 3-hens-1-rooster sized flock and about a month ago, I thought my wish had come true when one said hens went broody. Broody hens are amazing for farm wives who want more chickens on the cheap (or is it 'cheep'?) with little to no effort on their part. Only trouble was my broody hen who looked oh so comfy on her little nest set inside an old car tire also looked oh so yummy to a hungry predator (maybe time to have the coon hunters come pay a night-time visit again...) and while she escaped with a few less feathers, she abandoned her nest only a few days after she'd started a-settin' on it. I was able to borrow an incubator from my mother-in-law though and I figured if I could find where my chickens are laying their eggs right now (it's definitely not in the coop much to my dismay), I could hatch them on my own. But no amount of hunting high and low (well, mostly low) has yielded the location of said nest(s) so I decided to order eggs instead and started researching hatcheries.
Then I stumbled on a link that gave me an idea. Apparently, some people have had luck hatching store bought eggs. That sounded easy and cheap-both of which appeal to me very much.
Now it's not like you can try hatching any old eggs from the grocery store. Most eggs in the average carton are from laying barns and there aren't roosters running around doing their 'duty' so the eggs aren't fertilized. But if you can find eggs labeled 'free range' and from a more local source (think farmer's markets), there's a chance the facility won't have taken the roosters out of the hen house. There's an easy way to check for fertilization-crack a few eggs open and look for a little yellow bulls-eye blob in the yolk-and if you are lucky, you'll have a nice hatchable bunch of eggs.
Egg-cited by this prospect and in possession of not only an empty incubator but 3 dozen free-range eggs purchased just a few hours prior at my organic and local food grocery store, I decided to try it out. After all, if it doesn't work, I could chalk it up to test run and order incubating eggs from a hatchery.
So here we are. Day 5 of the grand Incubating Eggs-periment, a newly purchased automatic egg turner (that just arrived today) all set up and running, and a quick candling of a few eggs last night showed promising results so far. We'll likely have a few duds in the bunch but if all goes well (and with a healthy dose of luck), in about 16 days I'll have several little yellow fluff balls peeping around.
I just hope that they aren't all roosters...
