Sauvegarder la Poule Gauloise 🐓 (Faire une Couvée)

Watching your chickens' chicks hatch provides extraordinary satisfaction. But be careful, it requires a minimum of know-how, equipment, and patience. Here are the materials and steps to follow: Equipment: For the incubation Fertilized chicken eggs less than 15 days old An incubator A thermometer-hydrometer (To ensure the incubator is working properly) For after the hatch A cage that will serve as a brooder A heat lamp A non-siphoid waterer A feeder Steps: Preparation: Wait until you have at least ten eggs (because there is some loss until adulthood between incubation, hatching, disease, or predators). Place your clean but unwashed eggs in the incubator, point down. Candle them from the 7th day to monitor their development. Incubation conditions: 37.7°C and 65% humidity (37.2°C and 80-90% humidity at the end of the cycle), eggs turned twice a day until the 18th day. Hatching: The chick breaks through the shell on its own with its "diamond" (small point on the beak). Important: Never help a chick emerge from the egg. Those that fail are generally not viable or will produce weak birds that will be sick or in poor health. After hatching: warmth, care, and patience 24 to 48 hours in the incubator at 35°C to dry and digest, then place them in the brooder under a lamp or heating plate. Caution: Never place the brooder in direct contact with sunlight; chicks do not regulate their own heat, and exposure to the heat lamp combined with sunlight would be fatal. Dry litter, straw, hay, shavings, sand. Heat: 37°C (98°F) the first week, gradually decreasing to 18°C ​​(64°F) by the sixth week. Water & food: Clean water at room temperature, special chick food + hard-boiled egg/rusk. Monitor carefully: crowded chicks = too cold, chicks far from the lamp = too hot. Introduction to the henhouse From 4-6 weeks, depending on their vigor and the weather. Under supervision, as the hens' hierarchy is merciless. 00:00 Introduction 01:25 Preparing the Incubator 06:08 Day 8: First Candling 08:32 Day 17: Second Candling 11:12 Day 21: Hatching 12:22 Brooder Introduction 14:33 Day 23: Putting the Chicks in the Brooder 15:27 Outdoor Chicken Coops