Hatching our dinner...

Spatchcock

I think it started with a conversation about turkeys.  I love turkey at Christmas, but with just the two of us for the last few years our Christmas dinners have tended towards the vegetarian - it's just easier to cater for fewer people that way (and just as tasty!).  However, after spotting that one of the farm shops just outside Cambridge was advertising (prohibitively expensive) turkeys that had been bought to the farm as young poults and raised on site, I wondered if we could do the same.  Surely it would be far more satisfying to know that the animal we were eating had been given a full and happy life, rather than some ethical unknown from Sainsbury's chiller section.

We decided on a trial run with chickens.  After several hours' intensive research on the internet we purchased a Brinsea mini advance ex incubator; an all-singing, all-dancing affair with automatic turning, temperature and humidity control.  We also ordered 6 hatching eggs.  The breed I selected was the Ixworth, which is primarily raised for meat and they arrived through the post in a heavily padded foam egg carton.

The internet is an amazing resource for projects like this, ranging from photographs of a candled egg taken during each of its 21 days of development to discussion forums for every aspect of housing and illness.  I spent several evenings watching You Tube videos which showed the first 'peeping' noises from the unhatched eggs, which apparently stimulates the other eggs to hatch, followed by the first 'pip' as a chick breaks through the shell with its egg tooth and finally the emergence from the egg of a bedraggled chick.

We carefully bought Cambridge's most over-engineered incubator up to the correct temperature (37.5oC) and humidity (45%) and added ('set') the eggs. After 7 days we candled them to check which ones were fertile and developing.  Only one egg out of six showed the spider-like veins which are indicative of a developing embryo.  This was upsetting, not least because a single lonely chicken was not part of our overall plan for improved animal welfare; however, a friend in Cambridge had set some of her chickens' eggs into an incubator on the same day as us and promised that we could have one of her chicks as soon as they hatched.

Day 20 came and went with no peeping from our egg.  We reasoned that this could be because the egg had no fellow eggs to respond to, or maybe the incubator was unexpectedly soundproof.  Day 21 also passed without incident, then day 22.  Finally at day 24 we decided it was time to acknowledge the failure of our first attempt.  It was day 25 before I could bring myself to throw away the egg  - I had nightmares about it hatching alone in the bin.  It didn't (I checked).

Again the internet was the source of much advice.  It turns out that eggs delivered through the post, although commonplace (and I love the idea of hundreds of eggs whizzing around the country in the post), are associated with increased failure rates due to the uncertainty regarding the conditions during transit- they might have been left overnight in a freezing warehouse, or baked in a delivery van.  For our single egg which had clearly started developing but died, we could just have been unlucky as even within a 'normal' incubator hatch there can be cases of late stage death in shell.

We decided to try again, but this time using eggs from Hempsal's community farm. This would mean that we would have no control over the breed of the chickens, as the cockerels at Hempsal's are experts at hopping over the fences that separate birds of different breeds, but it would remove the uncertainty of having eggs arrive through the post.

This time 5 out of the 6 eggs were developing at 7 days.  Promising.  However, once again day 20 came and went without any signs of life.  The next morning we ate breakfast willing the eggs to do something, anything, to show that there were chicks inside, but there was nothing.  On the evening of day 21 I spoke to my parents on the way home from work and told them I thought the hatch had once again failed.  As I opened the door to our house I was already mentally planning my evening of  Google searches for 'late stage death in shell reasons', 'incubator settings eggs failing to hatch' and 'why, why, why are all my eggs dying?!'; however, when I checked the incubator one of the eggs had pipped!  Again there was no further sign of life - contrary to my You Tube videos in which this stage of hatching was often accompanied by peeping noises and vigorous egg rocking, but this was a definite improvement on last time.

First pip!

 The next morning we woke up to our first chick, damp, floppy and feigning death in the bottom of the incubator.  Like the anxious first-time chicken parents we were, we pressed our noses to the incubator to watch for breathing.  It was alive!  We had a chick!  If it hadn't been 7.30am on a Wednesday morning I swear we'd have broken out the champagne Prosecco.

First chick!

Over the next 24 hours all five eggs hatched, producing four black chicks and one yellow.  For the first few days of their tiny lives we felt the weight of responsibility for keeping them alive particularly heavily- was the heat lamp too close?  Would they drown in their ramekin of water (I actually got up during the night to check).  This was not helped by their habit of feigning death while sleeping.

Playing dead while sleeping

Amazingly, however, they survived, and thrived.  'They're developing feathers'! Ian and I called to each other in the mornings; 'They've mastered perching'! 'They're still alive!'

We mustn't get attached, Ian kept repeating, we mustn't get attached, to their cute little beaks and their tiny little wings... I was cold-hearted in my denial; of course I wasn't attached, I could eat them tomorrow if needs be (safe in the knowledge that there would be no need for a tiny chicken dinner tomorrow).

However, one week in and distinct personalities are beginning to show through.  Nugget and Supreme are the ringleaders and the bravest; the first to master perching and masters of 'bird ballet' stretching out each leg together with the adjacent wing.  Chasseur, tiny and all black, can fall asleep anywhere, including standing up with his head in the food bowl.  Provencal and Spatchcock are the adventurers, flinging themselves up at the top of the brooder, tiny wings flapping madly.

Spatchcock, Nugget, Supreme (bottom only!) and Provencal.

I'm still confident that we can kill them, when the time comes.  Not just because the cute chick stage will pass but also because naming the chicks, and caring about their welfare, as all part of the original plan for giving them the best possible life.  I'm not saying it will be easy, but it shouldn't be easy, that's all that is wrong with today's shrink-wrapped nameless supermarket chicken culture.

As for Charles Ryder, he's very grumpy about sharing his favourite spot by the log burner with the chicks. He can't wait until we eat the lot of them.