It’s important to say right at the outset that our family is omnivorous. The topic of food philosophy is a complex and often controversial one and the point of this post is not to go into detail on this (although I am happy to do so at a later stage), but I think it is important to understand that our path to self-sufficiency includes the raising of animals for consumption.
The first animals to be added to our eco-system were of course chickens. Chickens are a very practical and multi-purpose providing eggs, meat, feathers, scrap disposal, weed maintenance, fertiliser and pest insect control. With a free-range working flock of 7 hens and 1 rooster we have pretty much hit self-sufficiency with eggs but of course adding meat into the equation means that we need some additional birds for that purpose and while we have had one successfully broody chook in 2 years waiting for a not particularly baby-oriented batch of hens to decide to sit would not get us very far so an incubator was required. Last year I bought a cheap ‘first go’ incubator from ebay. It worked successfully the first time, with eggs purchased at great cost from a breeder. The second time with purchased eggs, not so much. A batch of guinea fowl eggs was particularly unsuccessful although it finished off the ones the chicken got sick of sitting on (they take longer than chicken eggs) with perfect results. It was obvious that if this was going to be a regular activity a more reliable ‘Fake Chicken’ would need to be obtained.
Luckily Noven and his parents banded together to get me a new one for a Solstice/Birthday gift. I promptly set it up with eggs from our working flock: 
This is an ‘industrial’ incubator (although the smallest one available) which has temperature and humidity control as well as automatic turning for up to 24 chicken eggs (I fit in 22 but that was probably 2 too many of our big eggs). Then there is the waiting…. and the waiting….
Three weeks later though we were rewarded with this:
The successful eggs hatched over the three possible days with two a day early and two a day late and a total successful count of 12. Not perfect, but I suspect that at least one of the hens is laying eggs that are not well suited to producing babies as they seem to have a very thick membrane under the shell and only one of them was successful (with a little help).
Now of course all the little babies are ensconced in their warm brooder box, eating, sleeping and making a mess as they should 🙂
Once they have their feathers in they will go into the nursery yard and the cycle continues….
Casa Indomitus 