At the tail end of Covid, I was able to relocate to a home with some land to expand my garden and yes have free-range chickens! It has been a wild ride and I have learned a lot along the way, chicken antics are a hoot. I consider chickens to be pets with benefits. I am not ashamed to admit I have a few favorites, namely Whiskers and Pretty Lady, though we have lost some to predators. The amount of joy and happiness they bring is immeasurable. My neighbors love to watch cute chickens waddle across the yard and “chicken” was our little neighbor’s first word. We enjoy their cackle and tiny feet tromping toward the back door because they know we have scraps for them!
Hatching was a natural progression to add to my chicken journey. Even though I have enough birds of my own hatching was something I was interested in doing. For this hatch, I started with 51 eggs most of them were blue with a few olive and brown eggs. Before set up my Ovation 56 EX Connect, I scanned through the documentation Brinsea provided. Once I got the incubator turned on and connected to wifi, I found the Brinsea Connect app effortlessly guided me through the rest of the setup, including setting the correct temperature and humidity for hatching chickens. During incubation, checking temperature and RH on my phone was very convenient instead of looking at the digital display on top of the incubator. I candled and removed 12 eggs that were not fertile plus 1 egg had a crack in it.
The chicks were scheduled to arrive on Friday but we woke up on Thursday morning to 1 baby chick already dry inside the incubator. I meant to take out the carriers and put the hatch mat down before bed Wednesday night but that did not happen. Thursday morning was like Christmas in our house, the kids got out of bed so fast! Did you say chick!? We opened the incubator to remove carriers and put the hatch mat down. I dropped water into the water drop line to get the RH to rise quickly and stabilize before I left for work that day. While at work, I kept a close eye on the app, and about 2-3 hours later I saw a jump in the RH level way past where I set it. I guessed that meant there were more new arrivals and when I got home there were 5 more chicks. We had 32 healthy baby chicks; 5 eggs did not develop fully and there was 1 egg that pipped but did not make it out of the shell. Overall, we had a great hatch experience and I plan to hatch more chicks in the Spring when more people are looking for chicks.
Tonya Olsen and her Brinsea Ovation 56 EX Connect Incubator
In the office Brinsea has always been the yellow go-to equipment we depend on for a consistently high hatch rate, always hatching a day or so ahead of time and now I can say the same for hatching at home. Overall, I enjoyed using the Brinsea Connect app. It was comforting to check the app while away from home, and it made me feel super high-tech! My favorite thing about using the app was seeing the RH spike while I was at work, which I was sure meant more chicks were hatching, and I confirmed that when I got home.
Tonya, USA
