The eggs are in the last few days of incubation and are due to hatch Sunday. Today we entered full "lockdown" mode -- which means you're supposed to keep the incubator closed to keep in the humidity.

I'm very anxious for at least some of them to hatch -- there are so many variables. With our homemade incubator and the recent hot weather, I've had trouble keeping the temperature constant. The thermometer beeps when it gets too hot, and I've had to manually open the lid to cool things off to the target temperature of 99 degrees. Twice it was beeping for an hour at the borderline temperature of 102 degrees when I wasn't around. And last night after making adjustments to keep humidity in, the incubator ran at below 95 degrees overnight. People who do this a lot say things like "a one degree variation in temperature can ruin your hatch". But then there are others who point out that "eggs withstand a lot of variation in nature so don't worry". I went ahead this week and bought the cute little chick feeding tray, 20 kg of feed and the water dispenser.

Saturday our family will be at Playland Amusement Park all day for Richard's company picnic, so fingers crossed that we don't come home to a beeping thermometer!