I've been thinking a lot as of late re: my Quack Pack & their eggs & possible offspring and expanding my flock. Years ago I had a Hova-Bator brand incubator. Hell, it was so long ago I can't even remember what eggs I hatched in it other than some sort of (most likely bantam) chicken.
Needless to say the price of the incubator has gone up quite a bit in the past 2 decades or so since my last one. I'm looking at prices and figuring at least some 300% if not more. Maybe I just want to think they were so much less expensive back then.
Anyway, I've almost convinced myself it's time to buy another before the price goes up even more. I'm thinking about putting a lean to next to my storage building, some 12' x 12' or so and enclosing the whole thing in chicken wire, having about 1/2 of it roofed and the rest merely screened in to raise quail. Once I get that completed I can set up my incubator in the office here. Inside the enclosure I can set up a brooder and such as that for my little birds. I'm thinking mostly Pharaoh quails for meat & eggs, some Bobwhite to set loose in the woods & fields nearby (I love hearing them sing of a sunny morn) and maybe a few not too often seen around here just for the "something different" factor.
I've already got most of the materials I'll need for the lean to except for the roofing so cost shouldn't be too outrageous. Then I'll have to fence in the Northwest corner of the backyard so the birds can stretch their wings w/o Bella biting their heads off! Any brood hens (and a couple of roosters I keep) can be pinioned as chicks to keep them from flying over the fence until when and if I decide to build a proper bird run as one would see in a zoo or such as that.
No comments:
Post a Comment