5th Annual BYC New Year's Day 2014 Hatch-A-Long

[ChickenCanoe]

Merry christmas everyone!!! Hope everyone has had a wonderful day! My mom made me a chicken pillow case, git me chicken towles, a book, a plush, and a tablet 2....which i have my home screen as a chick!
My uncle gave me these pjs too: (yes i do look a little cheesy...i was overly excited) lol

Awesome Birthday/Christmas. Nice book too.
I got a couple books from my chicken wish list too.

My chickens are having a lovely Christmas...I took out the chicken noodle soup leftovers and they are busy slurping up noodles and chicken (from a rotisserie at the store lol...haven't attempted to eat our own yet)! And whoever finds the biggest chicken pieces gets chased around the coop. I find it quite amusing, but 13yo dd isn't amused..."They are CANNIBALS!" Also gave them almonds, bananas (top two favorites), raisins, BOSS, corn scratch, and dried mealworms.

They are cannibals. Survival of the fittest and yours are more fit than those in the chicken soup.
My chickens get to fight over the bones, whether it be chicken wing scraps or a turkey carcass if we aren't making soup.

Merry Christmas.
The gifts look great. The cake is lovely too.

I got a new mini mag light pro flashlight to aid in my candling. It has over 200 lumen and I still can't see in the darker shells I have set. The eggs did not look that dark to me when I set them but I guess I will be saving up some chicken egg money to buy a better official candler. Or just waiting until I can smell the eggs.

Someone on another thread gave me this tip. Take the cap off of the flashlight, remove the lens and replace the cap. The egg fits down closer to the lamp and it works much better.

My red star eggs are not as dark as your maran egg. But with my flashlight I get close to what you are getting with your bright light. I'm thinking your candler would be great for my red star eggs.
But how do you decide which Maran eggs to keep if there are no clear veins or movement visible due to a dark shell? Since I won't be getting a better candler for this hatch I need an alternative method to decide when to toss these dark shelled eggs.

I don't cull anything if I don't smell anything when I open the incubator. I've been fooled before.

I have a couple of marans eggs with air sacks that I can't see. Does this mean they aren't viable?

Not necessarily and I would say no. I sometimes can't see the air sack. It doesn't mean there isn't one. There's always an air sac from a few minutes after an egg is laid and the cooling causes the contents to contract.

...
Dh just took a dozen of our eggs over to our good friends house (he and his wife were our realtors as well for this house and property we just bought), and he said they are the best eggs he has ever had. He wants to exchange feed for eggs!
No problem with that...our feed bill has been crazy. $60/month for 8 chickens.
...

That is a lot. My bill is usually between 140 and 200 for 40+ birds. In that bill is about half organic feed and an occasional $50 bag of fishmeal or poultry concentrate.
What constitutes that monthly feed?

Changed the bandages on Chicken Little tonight. The stitches look good a little blood had oozed but had dried. No signs of infection although some deep bruising is coloring up. Keeping an eye on one spot where the skin seems to be exceptionally thin.

Very proud of Cinder and Raven. Cinder got scratched up by the dog and Raven was chased. Despite that they gave me an egg apiece today.
Long John is keeping company with Chicken Little in the dog crate. He wasn't hurt so bad but he had so many feathers torn out that I feared that the cold would be bad for him. I mean the poor boy has only 1 tail feather left and is balder than a hen in a pen full of roosters. I guess I will be making him a fleece sweater using that pattern I posted last week.

Still not having luck candling my OE eggs. But there are no stinkers. I should have quail for NY Day and chicks two days later. I have no idea if the quail are going to hatch. I have been struggling to get the humidity to rise above 10%. They may just be dried out little mummies.

Chickens are extremely resilient and fast healers.
Good job on the stitches.
I usually just flush with saline, then apply betadine, campho-phenique and pack with a triple-antibiotic ointment. I then repeat twice a day leaving the wound open and trimming away any feathers that would enter it.
I also give a baby aspirin and a couple days of a subcutaneous shot of a combiotic.

 

[Wunjo]

Day 14 Candle

It looks like I have lost a couple. I seen no veining present in two of them. No movement either. I am gonna to check again at lock down but I doubt they are still kicking. I am going to go ahead and say I am now 34/36. Two more looks like they are developing slower. I also saw something inside them that just didn't look right. It kinda looks like an internal bruise... Maybe bacteria got inside? Pretty sure I am going to loose those too. Anyway in case of explosion I separated them and covered them with egg carton caps. I took an egg carton and cut out individual caps to go over the suspected bad eggs. I will still be more than happy if half of them actually hatch.

 

[Blarneyeggs]

[COLOR=800080]Had to show you all my favorite gift! I collect Jim Shore's but this one takes the top spot in my collection![/COLOR]

Love it! I've got no pips yet, just locked down yesterday, but I I've got D'Uccles in there and usually hatch early...I wonder if my temp was too low throughout....

 

[Penny Hen]

Awesome Birthday/Christmas. Nice book too.
I got a couple books from my chicken wish list too.




Chickens are extremely resilient and fast healers.
Good job on the stitches.
I usually just flush with saline, then apply betadine, campho-phenique and pack with a triple-antibiotic ointment. I then repeat twice a day leaving the wound open and trimming away any feathers that would enter it.
I also give a baby aspirin and a couple days of a subcutaneous shot of a combiotic.

Thanks. There was no getting around not stitching her up. The wounds, 5 of them totaled 12 inches. Her skin was gaping so bad on her chest you could see the breast muscles and the upper wo wounds on her back had opened the skin enough to see both shoulder joints. Fortunately, except for two puncture wounds every thing else was just slashed skin. I will get some baby aspirin tomorrow. I haven't seen combiotic at the TSC. Is their a particular place to get it?

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Thanks. There was no getting around not stitching her up. The wounds, 5 of them totaled 12 inches. Her skin was gaping so bad on her chest you could see the breast muscles and the upper wo wounds on her back had opened the skin enough to see both shoulder joints. Fortunately, except for two puncture wounds every thing else was just slashed skin. I will get some baby aspirin tomorrow. I haven't seen combiotic at the TSC. Is their a particular place to get it?

I'm sure with deep gashes, stitching was indicated.

I got Combi-Pen-48 at Farm & Home up the street from TSC which didn't have anything appropriate on hand when I was there.
It is 2 types of penicillin. I think any antibiotic would be better than none. You aren't treating a specific bacterial infection but more as a defense against anything the dog inflicted. I got the Combi-Pen because it is recommended for bumble foot injection. I haven't had bumble foot but the med doesn't expire for another year so I thought it would work for the birds mauled by the raccoons. They recovered nicely. I had my doubts for a while.

The Campho-Phenique is an antiseptic but also a pain reliever.
Initial use of hydrogen peroxide is good but after the first day betadine is better as it won't destroy newly growing cells like HP will.

 

[Cynthia12]

I'm sure with deep gashes, stitching was indicated.

I got Combi-Pen-48 at Farm & Home up the street from TSC which didn't have anything appropriate on hand when I was there.
It is 2 types of penicillin. I think any antibiotic would be better than none. You aren't treating a specific bacterial infection but more as a defense against anything the dog inflicted. I got the Combi-Pen because it is recommended for bumble foot injection. I haven't had bumble foot but the med doesn't expire for another year so I thought it would work for the birds mauled by the raccoons. They recovered nicely. I had my doubts for a while.

The Campho-Phenique is an antiseptic but also a pain reliever.
Initial use of hydrogen peroxide is good but after the first day betadine is better as it won't destroy newly growing cells like HP will.

I know the penecillan is great, can't say I know much about the Combi-Pen-48, but I can't agree enough about the Hydrogen Peroixde! You really don't want to use that any longer. Betadine is great. Like Chicken said..won't destroy newly growing cells. Great advice Chicken, just wanted to say amen to that HP!

 

[Cynthia12]

Up early with mom and the puppies. Thought I would check in..looks like everyone is still sleeping, or busy with children or animals themselves. Don't confuse the two please.

 

[Jucknath]

Up early with mom and the puppies. Thought I would check in..looks like everyone is still sleeping, or busy with children or animals themselves. Don't confuse the two please.

GOOD MORNING

 

[Blarneyeggs]

 
Thanks. There was no getting around not stitching her up. The wounds, 5 of them totaled 12 inches. Her skin was gaping so bad on her chest you could see the breast muscles  and the upper wo wounds on her back had opened the skin enough to see both shoulder joints. Fortunately, except for two puncture wounds every thing else was just slashed skin. I will get some baby aspirin tomorrow. I haven't seen combiotic at the TSC. Is their a particular place to get it?

I'm sure with deep gashes, stitching was indicated.

I got Combi-Pen-48 at Farm & Home up the street from TSC which didn't have anything appropriate on hand when I was there.
It is 2 types of penicillin. I think any antibiotic would be better than none. You aren't treating a specific bacterial infection but more as a defense against anything the dog inflicted. I got the Combi-Pen because it is recommended for bumble foot injection. I haven't had bumble foot but the med doesn't expire for another year so I thought it would work for the birds mauled by the raccoons. They recovered nicely. I had my doubts for a while.

The Campho-Phenique is an antiseptic but also a pain reliever.
Initial use of hydrogen peroxide is good but after the first day betadine is better as it won't destroy newly growing cells like HP will.

OMG!! CC! This advice is much needed, I've got a hen who had bumble foot, we soaked and cut out the abscess and she is still not the same, she is currently in a hard molt. I'm going to run to TSC today to get the Combi-Pen. I have 22 gauge 3ml needles n syringes on hand for blood draws...will that work? How much would you recommend? Would this be administer intramuscularly? Thanks



http://www.tractorsupply.com/webapp...01_CatalogEntry_en_US&searchTerm=combi+pen-48

 

[roostereggs]

WOW-EEEEEEEEEE!!! Tonight is Day 20...I was making my breakfast and I heard one of the eggs moving. It was a quick tapping sound as it was moving against other eggs! Kinda feel like waking everyone up but they would be mad...so I figured who would be as eggcited as me? My BYC peeps!

I couldn't get the humidity up at lockdown, but a feminine hygiene product brought it up to 58%. Dd was amused by that.

There are five small eggs in there from the CCL eggs I had shipped...possibly new layers because they are bantam size. Because they are so small, is it possible they could hatch early?