Earlier this spring I had a random thought that hatching eggs would be a fun spring project for the kids. I, of course, didn't want to spend upwards of $50 for an incubator that would only be used once, so I improvised and built one out of things I had and could obtain fairly cheap or free. I went dumpster diving at Petco and pulled out styrofoam boxes that were used to ship their aquariums, and I purchased a cheap thermometer and humidity gauge. I wanted to be able to see inside the incubator so we could watch the eggs hatch, so I used an empty 39 gallon aquarium that we had (since our pet rats died) and I cut the styrofoam to fit inside, attached a lamp to the top, and voila! An incubator! It wasn't the most accurate, but it did end up getting the job done.
I purchased some Mallard duck eggs and a week later some chicken eggs from local farmers I found on craigslist, and placed them inside. Then on April 2nd, our eggs hatched! (well some of them did).
Here is a video of one of our eggs hatching.
We now have 4 chickens and 3 ducks living in our backyard. The original plan was to give them away to a local farm after they outgrew the aquarium, but of course we got attached to our little babies so Brandon built us a coop for the chickens and we fenced off a section of our yard for the ducks (to protect them from our puppy. We did have one "incident" involving Cooper and the ducks when we just had the ducks loose in the yard.)
So now we have a nice little urban backyard farm. We are looking forward to when our chickens are finally old enough to give us some fresh eggs each day!
"Bernard" our first hatchling, fresh from his egg.
our 3 baby ducks.
Our chicks, the day they hatched.
Just a couple days old here. unfortunately the chick with the rust
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