Tuesday, March 15, 2016

The Power Outage Survivors

It happened.

It's probably one of the top three fears of incubation addicts.
Temperature fluctuations,
Improper humidity,
and a power outage.
Last Tuesday night everything was going to plan, the last couple chicks were in the process of zipping and would probably pop out sometime during the night. We had tons of babies bouncing around in the brooder learning how to be a chicken, I was relaxed finishing up an episode of my favorite TV show when it happened.
Everything went dark.
After the initial surprise wore off and the outage had lasted longer than a little hiccup in the power would be it dawned on me how much relied on the power.
Our babies in the brooder certainly needed a light.
The teenagers in the outdoor pen had a light on as it was windy and chilly that night.
And the poor chicks still making their way out into the big wide world REALLY needed the incubator to stay running.
A power outage is something I hadn't really thought about before this happened. I have certainly heard and read about it happening to other people but not much thought had been put into a action plan if something like that were to happen to me.

Please, if you incubate eggs on any sort of a regular basis, please make a plan. You may not think it will happen to you but no one is immune, it's better to be safe than sorry, have a friend you can go to that's willing to let your incubator camp out at their place, have a generator or some sort of back up electricity. The welfare of your chicks could depend upon it.

That being said, despite the unexpected hiccup, everything turned out okay. We moved the babies in the brooder inside the house and the outdoor babies huddled up and were fine. Our wonderful friends were willing to let me tromp through their house and hijack their counter space and some electricity at 11 at night. The babies that had yet to hatch wound up being okay, I had give them some major help in the morning though, the humidity had fallen way below needed in the whole frantic process of keeping them warm and they were incredibly shrink wrapped and sticky. They're doing okay though. They have been deemed The Power Outage Survivors and they have their own little brooder box right now as there are still some crusty spots that I just can seem to clean and the other babies were picky on them. In a couple of weeks they can probably hang out together. 
This experience was a great reminder to be prepared and to have a plan, thankfully no one was worse for ware by the morning, except for me. I didn't get a whole lot of sleep that night worrying about all the little fluff balls!
Hopefully the next batch will be much less eventful. On Sunday tons of mallard eggs and turkey eggs were set in the bator, 26 days to go!

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