Our Denizli Chicks Hatched!

I’ve been keeping a secret over the past three weeks. We’ve had some eggs in our incubator, and they’ve been hatching since yesterday!

It all started last month, when I found out about these Turkish chickens called Denizli Longcrowers. It was a happy accident; I saw a Tweet linking a video of a rooster that crowed for an extraordinarily long time, and it sounded so brutal that someone was compelled to enhance the video with musical accompaniment, graphics, and lyrics. I am, of course, referring to Death Metal Rooster. I did some research and discovered that it was a Denizli rooster, and that they are a rare bird here in the U.S. I was fortunate to find a breeder with hatching eggs available, and so we procured an incubator and started on a new farming adventure.

We’re complete noobs when it comes to hatching eggs, and so between our inexperience, and our cheap incubator’s erratic temperature control, we did lose quite a few of the original 15 eggs – only six remained viable for hatching. (You determine this by candling the eggs to see if there is a chick growing inside.) We didn’t opt for the automatic egg turner, instead doing it ourselves manually. Next time around, we’ll pop for the egg turner.

Chicken eggs take 21 days to incubate, and Tuesday was day twenty-one. Monday evening, just before midnight, George heard something peeping! Sure enough, one of the eggs had started to pip – we could see where a little beak was trying to break out of the shell! By yesterday morning, it had made more progress, and it was obvious that at least two other eggs were getting ready, too. The first chick hatched, and wow – was it amazing.

We went to bed last night with one chick about 90% of its way through the hatching process, and two more eggs pipping. I wondered what we would wake up to this morning, and clearly, my subconscious worked on that all night, because around 5:00 a.m., I woke up and hopped out of bed to go look. There were four chicks peeping away, trying to figure out what had happened to them. And I could see that the fifth egg was pipping!

They kept wanting to roost on the thermometer/hygrometer, which has thrown the humidity reading right off, because they remain wet after hatching. Ideally, you want them to dry out in the incubator, however, the hatching eggs need 80-85% humidity, and so that seems a bit of a Catch-22, doesn’t it?

The fifth egg hatched just over an hour ago, and I’m not sure about the sixth – I haven’t seen any activity from it yet. But the advice is to give it until the 25th day to see if it is just a slow hatcher. In the meantime, I wanted our new chicks to be able to dry off, so they have moved to their brooder, and are doing well.

Here’s a fun fact, in case you don’t already know it: baby chickens have a 48-hour food supply after hatching, provided by the egg yolk, which gets sucked into their bellies during the hatching process. That’s how day-old chickens are able to be shipped and survive the process.

They aren’t looking like the cute little fuzzbutts that I know they will turn into, but I still find them endearing, even while they resemble tiny wet velociraptors.

The past couple of days, my time has been occupied by checking in on these little sweeties. It’s been very exciting, and nerve-wracking, too! As soon as they are dry and fluffed up more, I will snap some more photos, promise.

Have you ever hatched eggs? What kind, and under what circumstances – for a classroom project, or for your own flock? I’d love to hear about other experiences!

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