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I’m about to become a chick parent

7/6/2023

Translation: Katherine Martin

If everything goes to plan, we’ll soon have a brood of chicks on our hands. For now, we’ve got an incubator full of chicken eggs. You’re welcome to join us on our journey to becoming proud chick parents.

In my author profile, I call myself a part-time chicken farmer. Given our current chicken brood stands at just four, you might find that a bit OTT. Still, the fact is, we’ve had some chickens for a few years now. I’ve already written about my experiences here.

Guide
Fan of fresh eggs? Keep your own chickens
by Patrick Vogt

We’ve never dealt with chicks before – especially since we only had a rooster for a short time. Without one of those, you don’t get any fertilised eggs. But now, we’ve got the opportunity to incubate some eggs nonetheless. Having our own chickens means our four-year-old daughter knows eggs don’t just come from Migros. She’s also learned both from books and from us that chicks hatch from certain eggs. Now she’ll get to see the miracle of the chicks’ birth for herself.

The Auer family from Pferdehof OHA in Fällanden gives us everything we need for our first chick-hatching attempt: 24 freshly laid fertilised chicken eggs and an incubator. Shoutout to the Auers for that!

The «ingredients» of a chicken brood at a glance.
Source: Sofia Vogt

I like my eggs warm and humid

Chicken eggs have an incubation period of 20–21 days. Over these three weeks, the hum and buzz of the incubator in the dining room will be our constant companion. However, the nonstop background noise is easy to bear when I think about what the device is doing for us. It’s providing the necessary temperature and humidity for the chicks to actually be able to hatch in the end. The incubator also regularly turns the eggs. I can set the temperature, humidity and rotation interval at the touch of a button on the display and change the settings at any time.

Incubating eggs on the left, freshly laid eggs from our chickens on the right.
Source: Patrick Vogt

Crunch time

We’ve only just started our attempt at becoming chick parents, so we don’t need the incubator’s rotation feature yet. In the beginning in particular, the embryos are extremely sensitive, so the eggs should never be moved during the first three days. During this period, it’s best never to open the incubator.

Our 24 eggs are now incubating happily at a temperature of 37.5 degrees Celsius as I write this. All that’s left to do now is wait and hope that as many chicks as possible survive the delicate incubation phase right at the beginning.

Please keep your fingers crossed for our first attempt at breeding chicks. After the crucial first three days, I’ll let you know how it went and what’s coming next. See you soon!

Header image: Patrick Vogt

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Patrick Vogt

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Patrick.Vogt@digitecgalaxus.ch

I'm a full-blooded dad and husband, part-time nerd and chicken farmer, cat tamer and animal lover. I would like to know everything and yet I know nothing. I know even less, but I learn something new every day. What I am good at is dealing with words, spoken and written. And I get to prove that here.

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