Firstly, can you believe it’s August already?! Soon people will be talking about that certain celebration held in December (notice I didn’t say the name…don’t want to be wishing the year away, lol).

To try and extend the Summer feeling we have a couple of top offers on for August.

Firstly the lovely little Rhode Island Red (RIR) House and Run, has come down in price to £159.99, which is, I’m sure you will agree, a brilliant price for a combined chicken house and run which features 15mm thick timber. A lot of people ask if the houses are treated at all and they are - they are treated with an oil based preservative so you don’t have to think about doing this before putting them together, making the constructon even easier. At this price it really isn’t too pricey to start out and have a couple of chickens in your back garden, and you could soon be enjoying your own fresh eggs every day.

The second offer is the P&T 48 egg incubator which is now also £159.99. This incubator offers space to incubate 48 chicken eggs, and features auto-turn, automatic temperature control and also has a built in sensor for the humidity, so it takes the guess work out of controlling the humidity. When you see that fully automatic Incubators are over double this price for the same capacity, you can see how good this offer is.

Combine these prices with the possible £150 you could win from Your Chickens Magazine - what a steal

Well the Rheas are growing - very quickly!  They are probably twice the size of what they were and have learnt to run around like fools, excercising their legs.

I’m still feeding them, what appears to be all the time, lol (3 times a day) and, it’s official, Rheas love green food.  I go to chat with them and the little “meowing” noise changes to a cheeping noise and the run around as if they have been fed something a bit dodgy!  :)  I have started to sing to them also - I’m not sure if Trevor is likely to carry on this little tradition I’ve started though, lol

Now you can imagine when you feed an animal boiled egg, cabbage, broccoli, amongst other things (chick crumb etc) that they are able to produce some amazing smells!  But all the same they are thriving and that’s the important thing ( I have told myself this numerous times whilst cleaning them out, trust me). 

Remember we still have a couple of RCOM incubators left on special offer from hatching these little beauties so check the Ex-Display/Used Incubators section of the site for a bargain.

Well it’s time for another feed so off now to watch their little dance show…

Whilst Trevor is away, taking a well earned break, we have a decent spell of weather here and the Bees decided that they had raised a new queen and were going to divide, so one of the hives swarmed.

Now I’m not exactly scared of bees however I have always sought a healthy distance to avoid me possibly running around looking all a little too feeble!

So when I came in to work on the Monday, and was advised that the bees had swarmed you can imagine a certain level of apprehension.  Unfortunately if they were not shown to a new home by us they would have just flown off and found one themselves, which would have meant that Trevor’s hard work would have literally flown away.

Now, bearing in mind Trevor is quite a bit taller than me (a good foot taller) his bee suits are not meant to be worn by someone 5ft 2inches (those 2 inches are very important when you are my height).  I donned the suit and have to say I looked a little like i was trying out for a MC Hammer video!  Under the suit my jeans were taped to my wellies as an additional precaution.  Luckily Glyn was also there to assist, however I think he had quite a bit more apprehension than I did. 

Never the less we trapsed up the field (trapsed is the word as it wasn’t that graceful) and was able to scoop the bees up and put them into a new holding hive thingy.  I apologise to all bee keepers, and Trevor, for my lack of termanology. 

The bees have gladly settled, however I really do not think that it is a “skill” that will ever feature on my CV

As Trevor has been busy incubating different breeds, we have now got our hands full with all different types of birds!

The newest chicks are the Rheas.  They are truly fascinating little things.  I’m saying little just for now as very soon they will tower over me (I am on the short side ). Once they have grown up then I’m sure that they will assist the Llamas in deterring Mr Fox also.

I have been takinga few photographs (like a proud mother) but the rather inquisitive chicks were fascinated with the camera and as soon as they saw it they ran over to me and pecked the camera constantly, thinking I was about to give them some more food :)  In the upcoming weeks I will make sure that I download some photos to the Blog and keep you posted on their progress.

Trevor used the RCOM 20 Pro incubators and RCOM 50 Pro incubators to hatch the eggs and I would advise to keep looking on the ex-demo/ex-display section as we may have a couple of incubators on special offer very soon (I have to clear this with Trevor first mind you, lol).

As you are aware I have many many incubators on the go at the moment and I really want to free range the young birds when old enough to be let out however we have a fox problem, so I have after a year or two of umming and erring taken the splash - and we will soon be the proud owner of 3 llamas as chicken guards.

Hopefully Tali will take over the guard duties early on and the other two yonger boys will watch and learn as they grow.

Talisman

Peter Peter ‘pumpkin eater’

And finally Tyger

I have had a great few days searching out eggs for incubating again, as you can see from the posts here the staff are getting all the fun with incubating hatching eggs but it is time I got my share of incubating back.

So I have arranged Rhea, Turkey, Peacock, Chicken, Pheasant and Quail eggs for next week.

I will be using the RCOM 20 Pro’s, Rcom 50 Pro and the Maru 500.  Yes running an incubator selling business makes me a lucky man.

I hope you put some videos together for you of the whole incubation process

May I say thank you to all your kind emails regarding our videos on youtube, I must admit when I started that I was going to get seriously laughed at but your responce has been very positive :). We are adding them as fast as we can but please give me time as we have 100’s of products and time is very limited. I will aim to do a few more houses and hopefully the RCOM 50 incubators by the end of April. If there is something you think is urgent that you need please email me at trevor@pandtpoultry.co.uk and I will try to bump it up the list.

Apologies for not writing about my new chicks sooner, however the incubating season is in full swing and we have been really busy (not that we are complaining )

Well the chicks are now a couple of weeks old and are growing so quickly.  They are still under a brooder hen and seem to like sitting on it and basking in the sun (it is a bonus that we have had such lovely weather the past week or so).  The brooder hens are such a brilliant idea as they just provide the warmth needed and as they don’t emit any light then the chicks get a good night sleep also (I’m starting to sound like a proud mother, I know!).  They are also so economical in comparison to the 250w light bulbs.

On day 22 of the incubation I did have one chick which had pipped however had not hatched so I took the plunge and carefully helped him or her out of their shell.  They remained curled up for a few minutes and I couldn’t help but watch to see it they would pull through.  I sat in my bedroom with the chick for quite some time (my fiance even noticed my absence so it must have been a while).  Then the chick stretched out and stood up.  I am glad to report that my little one is doing well and even though I shouldn’t have favourites… I do

Well I’ve gone and done it!  I have a RCOM Suro Incubator currently sitting in my spare bedroom at home with 24 eggs in.

Initially I thought to myself that I would look at is as a piece of homework, have the incubator and learn the ins and outs of it, however anyone who knows me knows that I am completely aminal mad and I am getting more and more excited as the days countdown to the hatch.

When I got the Suro home (luckily I have watched the very clever YouTube videos) I took all the items out of the box and laid them out on the work surface, much to the delight of my cat who was highly intrigued and tried to nick a few items to play with

Once I had everything in its place (a little pedantic I know) I then assembled the rocking cradle making sure that the aluminium poles we in a tight as possible before adding the screws.  I then assembled the pump and attached it to the incubator.  I put it all together and was very pleasantly surprised with the ease of it all (I thought that seeing Glyn putting a Suro together and doing it yourself were two very different things!) 

One tip is that the pump need to be primed a few times so the water travels through the tubes into the incubator.  Once you hold the + button then the pump kicks in and you can see the water travelling up the tube and as soon as a drop hits the humidity pad then the job is complete.

So I am now 11 days in and will be candling my eggs tonight once I get home.  I am truely excited about the next 10 days and I’m sure that this will allow me to know exactly what happens during hatch and afterwards.  I have read many a book and also listened intently when advice has been offered but nothing is like experiencing it for yourself