Mandieg4 - Update and lots of new pics of kids and animals.

[mandieg4]

A storm knocked our power out a little after midnight tonight. The power company said it would be back on by 3:45 am. At 4am the power was still not on so I called back and now they are estimating that it will be 8:15 PM before its back on. I have an incubator full of new chicks and a few still trying to hatch. Plus a brooder with 6 week old bantams. Of all the times for the power to go out! Any ideas how to keep everybody warm? The temp inside the house right now is about 75*

 

[Denim Deb]

Any chance you could get a small generator, just big enough to keep them going? Something about the size of this one? http://www.harborfreight.com/800-rated-watts-900-max-watts-portable-generator-66619.html

Another option might be one of these. http://www.harborfreight.com/5-in-1-portable-power-pack-96157.html Don't know how many watts you need, so I don't know if it's powerful enough, but figure it wouldn't hurt to put it out there.

 

[mandieg4]

I ran to Walmart and bought one like the second link Den posted moved the chicks from the incubator to a box and have a heat lamp plugged into the charger thing. I put a heat pack in a bread pan wrapped in a towel and put the last 7 eggs that are still trying to hatch on the towel. I filled a thermos with hot water and put it in the box hoping to raise the humidity some. Overall it seems to be working. I may lose the 7, but at least the first 18 seem to be doing fine. I'm just thankful the power went out last night after most had hatched and not the night before.

 

[TanksHill]

It's good to hear you have some back up power. Now you will have it on hand for any future events as well.

 

[mandieg4]

I cannot believe my hatch rate. All but two of the eggs that had pipped before the power went out has hatched and lived. Out of 32 eggs that went into lockdown, 7 never pipped, 2 died after pipping, and 23 are live and well. Considering that in the past 48 hours my humidity has gone from 45% to 100% down to 20% then bounced all around, but never higher than 50% in the past 18 hours while the last 7 have hatched. And temps have been anywhere from 72* to 101*. I think that I will never stress about a batch as much as I have will this one. Obviously the numbers just don't matter as much as I thought they did.

ETA the story of my day: I ran to Walmart as soon as the kids got on the bus and got a thing that jump starts your car battery that had an inverter. I took all the chicks that had hatched and put them in a box with a heat lamp. Then I took a bread pan, put a heat pack wrapped in towel in the bread pan then put the eggs that had pipped on the heat pack. Then I filled a small thermos with hot water and made a tinfoil teepee over both the thermos and the bread pan to hopefully keep the humidity up. Apparently the heat lamp had too high of wattage for my car and it kept running the battery in the inverter down faster than it would charge. (I didn't figure that out until this afternoon, lack of sleep really slows my brain down). So I ended up using heating packs. I was changing them out every 15 minutes all day long. Around 3 I realized it was the bulb that was causing problems with the inverter so I switched it to a regular bulb and was able to relax a little bit.

 

[Wifezilla]

Holy Cuteness!!!

 

[rebecca100]

I love the NN! One thing I do(or rather DON'T do) is turn the eggs. Most people don't agree with that, but my thought is why do it when you get good hatches without the extra effort. My last hatch was 45 chicks and not a single egg turned except when candling. So baters really aren't as difficult as most people think!

 

[Denim Deb]

I love the 4th pic!

 

[mandieg4]

In a million years I would have never believed it. The two eggs that had pipped but didn't do anything all day yesterday throughout the whole power outage fiasco actually hatched last night. When the power came back on I cleaned up the incubator and through the four that had hatched earlier and those two eggs back in the incubator just one the off chance. I really didn't expect them to hatch, they had been so dry and so cold for several hours. But some how they made it.

 

[framing fowl]

So cute!!! Congrats on your resourcefulness & creativity!