Velvet, the cabinet was part of a double blessing. We have a small hobby farm and I swear I try to have one of every living creature on it, lol. For ages, I had wanted an emu and a friend called and said , contact this lady , you will get your emu.... so I did and what I got was the sweetest lady who was trying to home her late father's emus and wanted only a few dollars for the pair in order to compensate the neighbor who would have to give his time to assist us in catching and trailering them..... as we talked , I told her about all my chickens etc and she said, when you go to the barn there at dad's , look inside , there is one of those incubators and I do not know if it still works but you can have it' I know dad used it up until a couple years ago.....so I did ....got it home, kicked off some dust and she fired right up, works like a charm.....believe me, otherwise , I would still be using them good ole styrofoam baters, lol...... I count that day as one of my most blessed...... got my babies who I adore and a great bater to boot....

Yay! Congrats on the chick! If you have any eggs that have yet to hatch, you might leave them an extra day or so, to catch any late bloomers. But mersiepoo is right, if there is some reason the chick doesn't make it out, it's usually best. :( I've only had to assist one chick out, and that was Bear, who is now our Head Hen. She was a very large chick in a very large egg, and we just picked a few pieces of shell from around her head once she'd pipped and it was clear she was in a bad position to hatch and couldn't turn in the egg like she needed to--then we returned the egg to the incubator and she finished up herself. But I'll never forget that little beak poking through the pipped shell and YELLING, then retracting and having a curious little eyeball appear at the hole. My husband was the first thing she saw and she's STILL bonded to him. :) Yesterday, Bear went broody, and picked a fight with our Beta Roo, Scott, who is a banty. She tussled with him so bad that he knocked one of the ends off one of his spurs, then he stood over it and looked at it, VERY confused. :) No real injuries, though, and today Bear is setting nicely on a nest. We haven't decided if we are going to give her some eggs to hatch or maybe some of the chicks from the incubator in 2 weeks. Velvet ~:>

Well........it didn't work out too well. All 4 chicken eggs hatched out @ days 19 to 20 (a Fri & Sat.) I had to take them to a brooder box because the momma got off the eggs to take care of them. She wasn't off more than a couple hours and it was 104 degrees at the time. One guinea hatched out on day 28 but it was dead by the time I got home from work. It was 105 degrees and I wasn't there to show it where to get water. On day 32 I chunked the other 5 guinea eggs into the pond and put the 4 chicks back in with broody hen. She pecked at them terribly and eventually abandoned them, so now she's back in the coop with all the others and I'm taking care of the chicks in a separate area.

Bob Walsh covers Mimi's egg-rooting method in his book on "How to grow plumeria-frangipani anytime anywhere", btw. Still miss the "Aloha Plumeria" forum though...and Mimi, too. I hope she's happy in her life, and stress-free. I'm currently rooting a bonus plumeria with an egg, and an Oahu Star cutting w/o one, -since I only had one egg available when potting them up. The bonus cutting is showing tip changes on it, already, but I can't consider this a fair test, as the Oahu Star cutting was considerably thicker than the mystery (gift) cutting was, when I rec'd them. To do a fair comparative test, I think I'd have to use 2 cuttings from the same source and root them the same way, (except for placing an egg under only one of them).