It’s been quite a week here on the mountaintop homestead!

Now, for those of you who live or grew up on farms, you’re probably going to roll your eyes at us. But, for Angela and I, this has been a nail-biter of a week! This was our first time ever incubating and hatching our own eggs!

As you all may remember, we lost Randy the Rooster to a predator last month. Believe it or not, roosters are kind of hard to come by around here. Mainly, people with chickens don’t like to have more than one rooster. They tend to fight with each other, as well as being a little aggressive with the hens. It was this event that convinced us to attempt to hatch our own eggs. Yes, we could have driven down to Tractor Supply, and bought a box of chicks as easily as ordering a plate of Zaxby’s Tenders. But, they don’t sell cockerels (baby roosters).

So, we gathered four eggs from our hens (fertilized by Randy himself) and got eight other eggs from our neighbor up the street (fertilized by Randy’s daddy). All 12 eggs went into a small tabletop incubator that Angela got me for Christmas last year.

Chicken eggs are supposed to hatch 21 days after the start of their incubation. We marked our “Hatch Day” on the calendar – June 3^rd. That was last Tuesday. We were excited, and a little scared. I’d bought a book about hatching and raising chicks. And, I watched YouTube videos about incubators and hatching chicks. There is so much to know!!

On Saturday morning, I noticed a tiny hole in one of the eggs. It was day 18! It was too early for hatching so I assumed that maybe the hole came from bumping another egg, or from the incubator egg-turning apparatus. We kept an eye on the egg throughout the day. About mid-day, the hole had gotten a little bigger. It was about as big around as a fly. One was hatching!

This chick had 3 things working against it that made the next 24 hours super stressful for us.

• It was early. Too early. We couldn’t figure out whether it had already been developing in the nest for a day or two before incubation, or if it was just a fast grower. Was it underdeveloped??
• The head was improperly positioned. The head of the bird should be in the wide part of the egg where there is an air pouch to let them breath before trying to hatch. This chick’s head was at the narrow end.
• I figured this out later but some of the inner membrane of the egg was stuck to the chick’s head. This prevented it from turning in the egg to crack the top of the egg off, and get out.

All Saturday, we were seeking advice all over Facebook and TikTok. Everyone was saying, “Don’t help it!” I was up well into the night staring at that egg. The little beak would poke out of the hole but it wasn’t making any progress.

Long story short – I helped. I got out a tiny pair of scissors and a small hemostat clamp. I trimmed a tiny amount of shell away from the hole, making sure not to damage the membrane. Hours went by, no progress. The little bird was trying as hard as it could but the hole in the egg wasn’t getting any better. I pulled it out of the incubator, and separated some more shell from the hole, and trimmed some of the membrane because the bird couldn’t poke through it either. After another couple of hours, I trimmed some more shell and some more membrane. When I went to bed, the bird was still fighting to simply try to rip the membrane, and poke its head out. Chicks are supposed to be able to rotate 360 degrees in the egg while making small cracks, similar to a can opener – only much slower. This one wasn’t turning at all.

The next morning before church, I noticed the membrane was drying around the bird, and sticking to it. Using a cotton swab and some warm water, I wet the membrane to help get it loose from the bird. I put him back into the incubator, and headed off to church, resolving that, if the chick was still stuck two hours later when I got back, I’d do some more work to help it with its endeavor. At this point, it hadn’t been able to rotate at all for 24 hours. Every time it pressed its head against the membrane, it failed to tear it any further.

At about 12:30 p.m., as I was driving home, I received a call from Angela. Upon answering, I hear, “It’s out! What do I do?!”

I was ecstatic. I was truly getting worried that this bird was going to die in that shell. Every hour that had gone by was full of wondering if I should do anything else and, if so, what and how much? “Helping” a chick hatch is a big no-no, according to all sources. Basically, you only assist if the choice is to help, or let the bird die. And then, you do the absolute minimum – just enough to allow the bird to break itself out. I was dead tired from having sat up and watched that egg well into the wee hours of the morning.

Well, that hatching seemed to be the starting gun for the rest of the chicks. When I got home, five more had little holes poked out of them. Another one emerged from his shell at around 9:00 p.m.

Earlier, we had placed the first baby chick in a tote we had already pre-set in our spare bedroom, complete with chick food and water, a heat lamp, and a humidifier sitting just outside of the tote. Once the newest bird was dry and fluffy in the incubator, we placed it in the brooder as well. The book I bought says that the brooder box needs to be the same temperature as the incubator for the first 24 hours or so that the chicks are in it. Have you ever tried to maintain exactly 100 degrees in a tote using a heat lamp? I spent most of that night in that bedroom waking up, checking the miniature thermometers I’d placed in the tote every half hour or so, and adjusting the height of the heat lamp. (I’d hung it from one of the microphone stands we use to record our podcast.) I lasted until about 4:00 a.m. in that room. The AC vents were closed and it was very warm in there.

On my way back to our bedroom, where Angela had been sleeping soundly, I took another look at the incubator to find four more chicks tripping all over each other, and peeping their little heads off. I felt it was only fair to wake Angela up so she could share in the moment. So far, every chick had waited until we weren’t looking to come out of their eggs.

There was still one egg with a small hole in it that hadn’t done much else. Angela’s daughter and son-in-law brought the grandkids over to see the new babies and we spent the day hanging out, and petting chicks. At about 4:00 p.m., that egg started rocking and shaking, and we could see the telltale little beak popping through the shell, working its way around in a circle. For an hour, we sat around that incubator watching, and finally, this new baby kicked its way out of the shell. (Angela posted a video of it hatching on her Facebook page on Sunday evening.)

Now, we’d already had that first bird who needed help hatching. One of the other chicks had curled feet and I had to tape its toes out straight so they would develop normally. The tape comes off tomorrow. And, then there was this last little hatchling. I was working at the Vacation Bible School at our church that evening and Angela keep updating me that this little bird wasn’t getting up and walking around like the others. It kept just lying there, and occasionally raising its head. It was the same when I got back from church and I told Angela we would leave it in the incubator until it got more energetic. Exhausted, I headed off to bed, only to be awakened about an hour later by Angela shaking me saying “I figured it out! Someone on Facebook told me the temperature is too hot!”

So, I got up, and lowered the temperature setting on the incubator from 100 to 95. Just a minute or so later, that chick was up and waddling about in the incubator. We were seriously convinced that this last chick was not going to make it.  It’s shocking how emotionally attached we were becoming to these little birds. We were steeling our hearts to find this little one lifeless when we woke up, and were overjoyed to see it fully animated. After it dried off a bit more, we cheerfully transferred it to the brooder box where we now have seven chicks peeping, pecking, sleeping, and pooping. – a lot. (We are using puppy pads, and changing those twice a day.)

We’ve got four black chicks, two tan Rhode Island Red chicks, and a yellow chick that is bigger than all the others. They will be spending the next few weeks in their brooder box before they’ll be big enough to place in a portable chicken coop we have coming from Amazon. And, later, they will join the three remaining chickens we have from our original flock of seven.

This experience was nothing like what I expected, and came with a lot of challenges. But, we handled each issue as it came, and managed to make it through. We hatched seven of the 12 eggs we incubated. Two eggs turned out to be unfertilized. That left only three that developed, and still haven’t hatched. Yesterday (Tuesday) was the official due date. We are going to give these last three a couple of days to see if they are late arrivals before we declare them failures. The next hurdle we face is seeing if any of these birds is male who can replace Randy as the head of the flock.

Only time will tell.

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Brian Whiddon is the Managing Editor of WritersWeekly.com and the Operations Manager at BookLocker.com. An Army vet and former police officer, Brian is the author of Blue Lives Matter: The Heart behind the Badge. He's an avid sailor, having lived and worked aboard his 36-foot sailboat, the “Floggin’ Molly” for 9 years after finding her abandoned in a boat yard and re-building her himself. Now, in northern Georgia, when not working on WritersWeekly and BookLocker, he divides his off-time between hiking, hunting, and farming.