Ah, September. The Kansas State Fair is coming up soon, and I fondly remember my days as a 4-Her, (im)patiently waiting for the judges to tie their ribbons on my entries. Red? Blue? Purple? Champion? Grand Champion? Oh please, oh please. 

How did you fare at the county or state fair this year? Tell us about your projects. If you’re still awaiting yours, what do you plan to enter?

Photo by iStockphoto/Jan Tyler

Our final chicken egg incubation test for the Community Chickens project is complete. We set eggs from Gabbard Farms in a Brinsea Octagon 20 Eco and Brinsea Mini Advance. I had great success incubating duck eggs in the Octagon Eco and wanted to see how the Mini would compare.

We received eggs of three breeds of white-egg layers: Golden Penciled Hamburgs, Silver Spangled Hamburgs and Appenzeller Spitzhaubens. Overall, 75 percent of the eggs were fertile. That’s good this time of year. Usually, fertility starts to drop in April or May and hits a low point between June and August (this varies depending on your location and climate). The eggs we set were laid in July, so fertility levels above 70 percent are perfectly acceptable. And I didn't open the eggs that were "clear" when I candled them, so more may have been fertile. Shipping eggs lowers the hatch rate, too.

Once again, the Brinsea incubators performed above expectations. All six of the fertile eggs in the Mini hatched (100 percent), and 15 of the 17 fertile eggs in the Octagon Eco hatched (88 percent hatch rate). Overall hatch rates, not accounting for fertility, were 62.5 percent for the Octagon Eco and 85.7 percent for the Mini.

And the incubators were easy to operate. Both incubators have automatic turning, and I set the Mini to turn eggs every hour for a fair comparison. The Mini can be set to turn eggs as frequently as every 45 minutes. Turning the eggs during incubation prevents the embryos from sticking to the shells and exercises the chicks. (See How to Improve Hatch Rates.)

The digital features of the Mini Advance make it a bit easier to set and operate, plus the range of options is a little broader than for the Octagon Eco. But you can buy a digital version of the Octagon Eco, too. It’s called the Octagon 20 Advance, and digital humidity display is a wonderful feature of the Octagon Advance. Humidity is such an important part of good incubation, and other methods of determining humidity levels are not precise.

If you’re planning to hatch a small number of eggs (such as in a classroom setting or as part of a small backyard poultry hobby), the Mini Advance is a great choice. You can see the eggs and hatching chicks just a bit better in this model. If you want to hatch a few more eggs at a time (up to 24 chicken eggs), buy the Octagon Eco or Advance. The value of more healthy, live chicks per hatch easily makes up for the cost difference between these incubators and the small Styrofoam incubators.

We’ve been hatching eggs in incubators for more than 12 years, and my wife’s comment sums it all up: “Using these incubators makes hatching eggs much more fun. More chicks hatch, and they don’t need help hatching.”

Here are the some photos of the two-day-old chicks.

Golden Penciled Hamburg chicks

Silver Spangled Hamburg chicks

Appenzeller Spitzhauben chicks

All the chicks in our GQF brooder. We put paper towels over the wire floor for the first few days so we can scatter feed on the floor until the chicks learn where the feeders are.

Photos by Troy Griepentrog

Coming up in the October/November issue, contributing editor and DIY expert Steve Maxwell shares the many lessons he learned during his twenty years as a homesteader. Man, is there a lot of trial-and-error involved in the process of honing those skills! Veteran homesteaders: Please, please share your wisdom with those of us who are just getting started down the path to self-sufficiency — what are the most important lessons you learned along the way?

Photo by iStockphoto/Moira De La O

Homesteading in its broadest interpretation can entail being almost completely self-sufficient: growing, raising and crafting most of the daily necessities of life. A return, as it were, to the days of our pioneering ancestors who did it themselves or did without.

By contrast, an urban homesteader, which I consider myself to be these days, gleefully takes advantage of local foods, not feeling the necessity of growing or raising all their own veggies and fruit, or even eggs. In Topeka, during the months of July and August, fresh peaches can be found at most of the major produce stands at the Saturday local farmer’ market.

I hold up the line as I pick up and smell the fresh peaches in the little green cardboard boxes. If a warm, sweet, peachy aroma doesn’t reach my olfactory senses, I move on. I want the essence of a fresh peach to practically knock me to the ground. The fuzzy packages of flavorful goodness do not come to us cheaply — $4 for a box of five peaches. And it is imperative that you look at the one on the bottom of the carton as it may be an older, slightly bruised specimen, snuck into the deal. The peaches come from orchards in Missouri and Georgia. Missouri is just a stone’s throw from Topeka, so it seems reasonable to still call the Missouri peaches local. Kansas has not had the best weather recently for a predictable peach crop

I settle on the right box of perfectly ripe, fresh peaches, gently placing the treasure into my shopping bag and quickly head for home. I want to place each peach on the counter, not touching the others, to cut down as much as possible on the possibility of a tiny bruise exploding into a nasty blemish. The fun of making this summer dessert begins as I carefully peal the soft skin from the juicy flesh, the aroma tempting me to just pop half the peach into my mouth and be done with the agony of waiting for the perfect flavors to come. I slice the peach into a custard cup, one at a time, add a teaspoon of sugar, stir and wait about 15 minutes for the juices to develop. Then, just before eating, I drizzle a tablespoon of cream into the cup and stir gently.

Ahhh, peaches and cream. For me the most perfect of fruit flavors — cool, sweet, creamy and aromatic. By Sunday evening they are gone, and I must wait another week and hope they’re still available at the Saturday farmers market. Tomorrow is one of those Saturdays. I can almost taste the fresh peaches and cream right now.

For decades, we’ve relied on antibiotics to treat infection. In a scary turn of events, however, we’re finding that when used improperly, these drugs are ineffective or can even worsen the problem by creating “superbugs” — bacteria that have become antibiotic-resistant. 

Probably the most egregious example of improper antibiotic use comes from the livestock industry. Some 70 percent of total antibiotic use occurs in the livestock industry to speed growth and ward off disease, and some in the medical community are warning that we’re headed for disaster. Antibiotics are routinely used whether the animals are sick or not — breaking the first and most important rule of protecting antibiotic efficacy. 

Enter Rep. Louise Slaughter’s H.R. 1549/S.619: The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2009. The bill is designed to prevent the agricultural use of antibiotics important to human health unless the animals are sick. 

Livestock organizations such as the United States Cattlemen’s Association state that if passed, American producers could no longer compete with foreign markets and our meat would have to be imported. Opponents claim that at the very least, meat prices would skyrocket to offset the increased costs experienced by producers. 

Supporters of the bill maintain that antibiotic resistance adds millions to healthcare costs — $4 to $5 billion per year, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts. The group also states that 300,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths are caused by food contaminated by dangerous pathogens and bacteria such as Salmonella and E. Coli each year, and these bugs are becoming increasingly antibiotic-resistant. 

What do you think?  Do you support this legislation? Let us know your thoughts.

Photo by iStockphoto