Incubation!

Sorry again for the delayed update... life at The Gnome has become very much day-job oriented around here. We haven't started building the coop yet because we have a friend who has a mess of wood at his place that he's giving us, but right now it's not accessible because it's on a steep hill, and right now it's so muddy from the massive snow and then the melt we can't get the truck up the hill. After the next big freeze we'll go up there. I'm thinking about making it considerably larger since the wood is so long... considering putting the chicks in the kiddie pool again in the basement and making a separate, very large coop outside. We'll see what happens when we get the wood here.

Another friend of ours has Cuckoo Marans that he hatches and gave us about 15 hatching eggs. They look very much like Barred Rocks but a bit blurrier and lay very dark chocolate colored eggs. Wikipedia Article Here

We warmed up the incubator and are trying them out. He thinks we'll be lucky to get half of them to hatch because it was so cold when they were laid some of them were half frozen by the time he collected them.

The eggs are incubated at 99-101 degrees for 21 days or so.