Day 2 the incubator set-up :/

As I said earlier thermometers are ten a penny, or so you would think. This mis-conception led to miles being driven, fuel being burned and arguements being irationally fought. Nowhere seems to stock thermometers - unless you have like £30 to spend, well I was not willing to spend that amount!

Well after a day of driving round here and there for this vital piece of incubation equipment, we conceeded to the fact we would have to look at other methods and so switched on the PC and entered the name of that oh so well known aucion site into the search box. I had given up on the high street, the garden centres, the supermarkets and the retail parks of the local area. They were useless. I typed in the search criteria : thermometer and by the miricle of the chicken god there were thousands of results. I actually began jumping for joy - pathetic I know, but after the day I had had it was forgivable.

"Right," I screamed with joy "we'll have that one - it does humidity too" well, you can imagine the excitement in the room. I had found a wonderful tool that told you not only how hot it was but also how wet it was too! Wise Guy then piped up "that's in Hong Kong, gonna take four weeks to get here" hmmm, this was 7 days longer than my eggs incubation period so again we had hit a brick wall. All listings were either from the modern-day factory of Hong Kong or very, very expensive. It was a conspiricy! I raved this theory, much to the Wise Guy's amusement for many, many minutes and returned to it several times over the next few days!

So, for the immediate future we gave up on the idea of a thermometer. The incubator had a built in thermomstat, so it should be OK for a few days without, I cleverly summised and set to getting the state-of-art polystyrene fish box up and running.

The 'state-of-art' incubator.

Having read and re-read the instruction I knew exactly what I was doing and arranged the box like so: mat in the bottom (stops eggs slipping) and small pot of warm water with sponges in the corner. I ignored the bit about a thermometer being placed straight away to avoid ranting about the government/retailers/little green men being against chicken breeders.

I did, however, remember to connect the incubator to the adaptor before plugging it into the power, so the complete destruction of my new business was averted. When plugged in to the power supply the dramatic sound of the fan kicked into action and i hurridly moved the box until the noise was somewhat subdued.

While I awaited the proof that the thermostat was working I carefully marked all of the eggs with a O on one side and an X on the other. As I would be hand-turning theses little blighters I would need a point of reference, after all, I am easily confused.

"The thermomstat works", I shouted - rather obviously - over the restored silence of the small front room we inhabit. I proceeded to add the eggs on at a time X facing up. Now my work was done until day five when I got to see if any of the eggs had taken.

The eggs in place (the thermometer was found 2 days later in a well known DIY store)