A century of Turkey talk 2000-2100.

[Finnie]

GUESS WHAT, EVERYONE?




I have eggs hatching today!....and tomorrow.. and the next day...and the next....

I really screwed up my egg setting somehow. I was doing so good, until the turkeys and chickens started messing with the schedule.

Me too!

Well, not nearly so many as you. Only 25 chickens eggs hatching right now, and one lone turkey due to hatch Wednesday. (That was before I was told to set the chickens to hatch at the same time as the turkeys. For my next batch, I have 8 turkey eggs set to go at the same time as the chickens.)

But this leads me to the questions I've been searching for answers to. And I know this is the place to ask, because you are some serious hatchaholics over here!

If (lol, or when) you guys lockdown tons of eggs, does it matter if there is space between the eggs, or if they are piled one on top of another? If it's really overloaded, does that affect the hatchability of the viable ones? Does the poo and gunk from the first chicks hurt the remaining eggs? If they don't have room to stretch their zipped shell apart, will they get stuck inside?

I have one chick whose butt was stuck in the shell for over an hour. I gave up waiting and went to bed. Now it's free of the shell, but it still sits in the same spot, like it may have something wrong with its back or legs. (It has until the rest hatch before I decide if it needs to be put down.) Not sure if the chick started out defective, or if being stuck in a shell that couldn't roll away from the nearest eggs somehow hurt it.

Thanks for any answers you can give!

 

[duluthralphie]

Yeah Ralph, I'm familiar with that turkey hen bark! Although that's one of the more interesting things about my turkeys. I can pretty much figure out what's going on with them based on their vocalizations. It's so varied and expressive. I just love that little happy turkey trill. And if they are in the gardens with me, Daisy will do that locator call. I'll yell over at her & she'll do the trill. Of course this goes on every 10 minutes if she can't see me. She tends to do this from her dust bath. Guess she just wants to know where I am but doesn't want to get her big turkey butt out of the spa.

You need to let Ethel out by herself in the evenings during Chicken TV for some special bonding time!

As much as I want Ethel out, I dare not let her out. She would run off and make a nest. I do not want her making a free range nest this year. I am worried about her. Every year when she does this I am on pins and needles when I cannot see her everyday. I worry about a predator. The other think is her chick raising ability in the wild is not good. Something always gets them. This year she will be locked up until they are full grown.

I do go into the pen and sit with her some.

 

[duluthralphie]

Oh My God! What will you do with all those birds? Do you have a ranch? What types of birds do you raise? (My husband should consider himself lucky;-)

I was wrong I have 80 more viable eggs..Which gets me to Finnie's question.

I do not like the hatchers packed. I throw out the egg shells as soon as a bird hatches, As soon as I can get the cartons out of the hatcher I do. I want the chicks to have room to move.

Now because I have over 120 birds hatching in the next 3 days, I am seriously overloaded. What I did was move all the eggs that need to set and rest before hatching on the 18th into egg cartons and slipped them into the hatching tray on the 1202. I will move them on the 18th to the hatcher. For me "lockdown" is just a term I learned on BYC and does not mean anything more than the last three days of hatching. I have no fears opening the hatchers when need be to do something in the hatchers. A mother hen does not sit on her eggs steady for the last three days or worry about the humidity.


Hatching is a dirty filthy process. My eggs are now sterile when they go into the incubator. I do not clean the poop and hatching gunk the other chicks put on the eggs off. I would like to, but I do not want to kill the chicks with chlorine if there is a crack or pip I do not see. Also the chicks are living breathing organism at this stage. Chlorine would be bad, I think.

I had an egg explode in the incubator. It was a turkey egg set to hatch on the 13th. I am not sure what happened. I think I accidentally gathered an egg one of the turkeys had started to incubate. The egg shells are so thick I cannot see through them all when I do my pre-set candling. I have smelled something for 2 days. I have opened and pulled the trays and found nothing. Today when I was picking eggs for the hatcher, I found two eggs with gunk on them. I could not find a bad egg around them and they were good. I pulled the tray above them and found the bad egg.

I have removed it, and egg-tupsied it I tried to spell that with an O but spellcheck would not let me... It had a 1/2 developed chick inside. An egg hatching on the 13th would not, something was amiss. I want to disinfect those two eggs I don't think I dare. I hope my entire hatch is not ruined because of it. I have 36 Creamette eggs this hatch!


I will be removing chicks as soon as feasible from the hatchers. A dry walking chick is headed for the MHP! I need the room. My wife does not know how bad the next 3 days will get. Let us all agree to not tell her. And If you do I will deny it is that bad, no matter how bad it is.

Hope this helps Finnie.

 

[Finnie]

Quote: It does, thanks! The more I can absorb, the better. I tried to join the Incubating with Friends thread, but the exponential growth of posts on that thread was impossible to keep up with. If I asked a question, there was no way I could scan through the dozens of pages that came next in order to find out if anyone had answered me. So I just learn things basically by what I find on accident, or by searching, which is iffy.

So far I have learned that there are "meddlers" and hands off types. The meddlers say they keep their humidity up high enough that opening the hatcher as much as they want is safe. Unfortunately, my little DIY bator has a hard time keeping its humidity, so I don't dare open it. I can see your point about the mother hens not worrying about humidity, but as a newbie, I'm not ready to move into the meddler camp.

Also, for this hatch, I wanted to keep the different "breeds" separate, so I divvied them up into three separate baskets. I don't think I could remove a dry chick if I wanted to.

 

[Finnie]

I still would like to know if people have eggs on top of eggs for hatching, and if the bottom egg suffers. I was able to find in a search that people do this with their turning trays, and somehow the top eggs turn? And they don't crack the bottom eggs.

For "lockdown" where there's no turning, I didn't fear stacking a couple of the eggs. Don't know how I would feel about stacking them in a turner, though.

 

[Penny Hen]

Issues of capturing a wild turkey aside. ....what would cause an apparently healthy bird to go blind.

That is my main concern. My DH and I were hypothesizing this morning over coffee. He was wondering if she drank some anti-freeze. He thinks that it is the result of poison of some sort and at this stage (without scientific analysis) I think it is looking more like a poison. We are inside the city limits but on the edge of forested land. There is a lot of wildlife here but plenty of people to so the possibility of the poisons being out where the turkey could get to them are there.

And if it is a disease, then the wildlife people need to know. I caught it because it was blind and helpless but also because it was traipsing all over my land and if it is a disease I don't want it spread around. If I had let it alone and just called them they may not have been able to find it by now. A dog might have killed it and drug it off. Then no one would know anything. I know that sometimes some people get a position of power and turn into unctuous bureaucrats but REALLY! I wish people would quit checking their brain at the door when they go to work for the government. Like I was going to be able to contact anyone on a Saturday night anyway!

My BIL lives in GA. He has loved turtles since he was a kid. He always stops and moves them off the road. He also likes to garden and he put in a water feature pond/fountain with water plants. Well a mated pair of turtles moved in. They had babies and they grew and lived in his pond. Well they were a species that was in short supply and the Wildlife Refuge Center had been trying unsuccessfully to breed them. He was having to move so he didn't want to leave the turtles there when the new owners might not be friendly to them. The parent turtles had returned to the wild leaving the little pond to the kids. He gathered up all the young turtles and took them to the WRC. They were glad to get them but told him that they would have to issue a ticket because he had them. So he had to go to court. The judge, who had not checked his brain at the door, dismissed it. AND after all that, you know the WRC never asked him what his setup was that made the turtles comfortable with having their family there. My husband has seen him rescue snapping turtles big enough to bite your hand off at the wrist and they won't bite him. The Wildlife people will piss and moan about being under resourced but if someone like my BIL comes along they won't think to say "Hey, how would you like to get the training and the licence to do this work?" And then make it possible that they can.

 

[Finnie]

Man Ralph! You must have some serious denial skills!

I assume you must have a decent market for chicks in your area.

In Indy, there is a guy who ALWAYS has chick ads on CL. Just a few breeds, mainly boring high egg production kinds, nothing fancy or pretty. I see his ads all the time, but am never tempted to get any of his. But I imagine that the REAL farming community always has a need for efficient layers. But yours are "creamettes" and SS. Do they go to farmers, or backyard type folks?

 

[Finnie]

Quote:
Nice to hear there are reasonable judges out there. Has your BIL considered applying for that kind of licensing? That would be great for the WRC and for the animals, but probably a hassle for him to deal with the brain checked coworkers.

 

[memphis]

Penny Hen....I realize the issues in capturing wild animals and would have done the same thing. I couldn't leave a helpless bird like that to fend for itself. I think you've impressed us all with your turkey wrestling capabilities!

So what's next? Are you calling the wildlife folks? I'm so curious as to what caused the blindness. So strange.

 

[memphis]

Geez Ralphie...that's a bunch of babies! I can just see Judy planning the intervention.