Got mine today, too, and just sat down with a cup of coffee and read it.
Michael, I particularly enjoyed your \"Under the Black Locust\" - thanks so much for the info about protein. You described my hatching problems last year to a \"t!\" I was losing huge numbers of embryos in the last week of incubation. No apparent reason, they just seemed to quit - burn out, as you put it. This was so disheartening, especially given the great hatches I\'d had the year before. I calibrated thermometers, scrubbed & disinfected incubators, candled/marked/weighed eggs throughout incubation (humidity was all I could come up with), just couldn\'t figure out what I was doing differently, but the previous year I was hatching from free-ranging EEs. My Ameraucanas were penned so, even though they received the same feed, they didn\'t have access to a lot of the things the previous year\'s birds did. I\'ve bumped up my protein this year, and I\'m praying that\'s what the problem was!
I hope the homesick eases a bit in the coming months, and 2011 brings lots of good things for you!
