Got them started....

I remember one time in the late 1960's, when my Dad was out doing a little work on a piece of hay meadow we had. He came home at noon with a clutch of about 8 or 9 Ringneck Pheasant eggs he had found. Mom brought out the old (even at that time) Egg incubator she had, and we put them inside. Several days later, we had baby birds.

Mom didn't use the incubator very often, but I recall several times when she did. Back then, we had a hatchery right in town, so it was easy to buy chicks. We still hatched a few every once in awhile. I even took it to school one year (1st grade) and hatched out a few there.

Mom gave me her incubator over 30 years ago. I've had it stored ever since. She told me way back then that she knew that I would be the only one to ever want to use it again. I guess mom knew what she was talking about.

I brought the incubator down out of the attic last Friday and got it ready to use. It is one of the older round metal ones sold under the Montgomery Ward's name. It is actually made by a company called Brower, out of eastern Iowa. I managed to contact Brower, and was told that the unit remained basically the same from the mid 1930's until the late 1970's. He figured that my unit was made in the early 1950's.

This morning, I plugged the unit in to warm it up and then put in 36 eggs. It is SUPPOSED to hold 50, but it would be close! MAYBE. It doesn't have a turner, so I will need to remember to do that 3 times a day, but that shouldn't be to terribly hard!

We will see in a few days how things are progressing, and hopefully we will have some chicks in about 3 weeks.

I'm just glad mom had the foresight to give the incubator to me. It will be a fun experiment!