Anna Hess - Permaculture Chicken: Incubation Handbook

Permaculture Chicken:
Incubation Handbook

Volume 1 of The Permaculture Chicken Series

by Anna Hess

Copyright 2012 by Anna Hess
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Visit my blog at www.waldeneffect.org.
Contents

Introduction
A muffled peep comes from a pristine egg. The egg vibrates gently as the fully formed chick inside pushes its way into the air sac at the blunt end, then knocks against the inner wall of the shell with its egg tooth to make a breathing hole into the outside world.

I watch with baited breath for seven hours. Nothing. I would think the chick had perished if I couldn't see the membrane around its tiny beak flutter in the air currents of the chick's breathing. The baby chicken is only resting from its exertions and preparing for the most difficult adventure of its life to date.

With sudden vigor, the chick goes back to work, whacking its face against the boundary of its minuscule world.

The unzipping process has begun. Piece by piece, the chick knocks a circle of shell fragments out of its way, cutting the top off the egg.

Once in the groove, the chick no longer stops to rest, except for brief breathers during with it peeps adamantly. "I'm coming out!" I imagine the youngster saying.

Within half an hour, the shell has split nearly in two.

Rather than laboriously rotating its body so it can continue pecking at the shell, the chick now puts its strong legs to work. Bracing its head against the blunt end of the shell and its feet against the pointed end, it puuuuuushes....

I can see sodden feathers through the crack, and I gasp in awe.

The egg begins to roll against its neighbors from the force of the chick's exertions.

Yet more chick becomes visible until... plop! ...the baby bird falls out onto the floor of the incubator.

All that effort has worn the poor chick out, so it lies there, partially emerged, for several minutes while it peeps ecstatically.

Then, with a massive flapping of incipient wings, the chick is free to drape itself across its unhatched siblings.

I'll never forget the excitement and drama of my first hatch. But I also remember the emotionally difficult aftermath when our first vibrant chick accidentally speared one of its later-hatching siblings with a toenail, killing the youngster immediately. Other chicks didn't even make it to the unzipping stage and I knew their fatalities were (mostly) my fault.

This book walks you through perfecting the incubating and hatching process so you can enjoy the exhilaration of the hatch without the angst of (many) dead chicks. I'm not an expert on incubation, having only tried my hand at it six or seven times, but luckily the difference between a 15% hatch and an 85% hatch is pretty easy for even the amateur to grasp. Follow the tips in this book and you will soon have happy, healthy, homegrown chicks pecking through the clover in your backyard.
The permaculture chicken

This book is the first in the Permaculture Chicken series, which is devoted to making backyard chicken keeping cheap, sustainable, less smelly, and more fun.
If you're not familiar with the term, permaculture is a method of tweaking agriculture to mimic natural ecosystems, with individual components typically filling several niches. For example, in a permaculture system, a chicken might mow the lawn, help make compost for the garden, and scratch up pest insects under your peach tree, all while cutting back on your purchases of store bought feed. The result is less work for the farmer, a more resilient homestead, and healthier livestock and plants.
In later volumes, I'll walk you through other aspects of our permaculture chicken system. I'll explain how (and why) I transitioned our flock from stationary runs to chicken tractors before settling on rotational pastures and free ranging. I'll write about unusual foods our chickens eat with relish, which chicken varieties work best in a permaculture setting, and how to raise meat birds economically if you're not a fan of the over-engineered Cornish Cross. I'll also devote a volume to methods I use to integrate chickens even further into our homestead.
If you'd like to find out about later volumes as soon as they're available, subscribe to the RSS feed at www.wetknee.com/chickens, email anna@kitenet.net and ask to be added to my very low traffic book email list, or stay tuned to my blog at www.waldeneffect.org. Meanwhile, keep reading to find out about the foundation of the permaculture flock --- healthy, homegrown chicks.
Why incubate?

While we'd love our favorite hens to stick around forever, chickens have a limited shelf life. A hen begins to lay when she's about six months old, and she does her best work by the time she's a year and a half old. Depending on how hard-nosed you are, you might keep your laying hens one year, two years, or three years, but after that, you're feeding large amounts of grain to an animal who has basically become a pet.