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Chicken Incubators Assume You Can See

Most people hear “blind” and immediately lower the difficulty setting on what they think my life looks like.

Some people are genuinely surprised I can cook dinner, raise kids, keep animals alive, or work full time without accidentally wandering into traffic.

The truth is, blindness changes a lot of things. But it usually doesn’t change things in the ways people expect.

Some of the stories you’re going to read here are probably going to sound a little ridiculous.

So with that in mind, let’s get into today’s chaos.

I have a leghorn that I absolutely love. She was part of the first five chickens I ever got when we started our flock. She’s solid white, and her name is Mrs. Black.

Not the smartest chicken, bless her heart, but she follows me around like a little dog and yells at me if I’m late bringing snacks.

After being heavily influenced by other chicken people online, I eventually bought an incubator and got the bright idea that I should probably hatch eggs myself. (This is the incubator I used — Harris Farms Nurture Right 360.)

That’s how I discovered that chicken incubators are apparently designed with the bold assumption that the person using them can actually see the display.

There are basically three things you need to monitor when you’re incubating eggs: humidity, temperature, and how many days the eggs have been in there.

All of which, of course, are displayed on a tiny digital screen on top of the incubator.

So naturally I started engineering my own accessibility features.

First, I moved the incubator into my closet because my dogs absolutely could not be trusted around what was essentially a warm plastic box full of future chicken nuggets.

Then I bought a Bluetooth thermometer that connected to my phone so I could monitor the humidity and temperature inside the incubator without needing to read the built-in display.

The humidity tray inside the incubator also needed regular refilling.

Thankfully, there was a tiny external fill port for the humidity reservoir, so I used a cup of water and a small plastic tube to refill it from outside the incubator.

And somehow it worked.

Out of 21 eggs, 14 hatched successfully.

At around three in the morning, my closet started peeping at me, which turns out to be a very effective auditory notification system for newly hatched chicks.

So now, against all reasonable expectations, I apparently hatch chickens.

Mrs. Black and her sisters seem pretty proud of themselves about the whole thing.