APRIL FOOLS HATCH, give or take a day.....who's in ??

[mandieg4]

What a stressful day!!! The end of day 20 and the power went out just after midnight and didn't come back on until 4:30 this afternoon. At 6 this morning I ran to Walmart and got a thing that jump starts your car battery that had an inverter. I took all the chicks that had hatched and put them in a box with a heat lamp. Then I took a bread pan, put a heat pack wrapped in towel in the bread pan then put the eggs that had pipped on the heat pack. Then I filled a small thermos with hot water and made a tinfoil teepee over both the thermos and the bread pan to hopefully keep the humidity up. Apparently the heat lamp had too high of wattage for my car and it kept running the battery in the inverter down faster than it would charge. (I didn't figure that out until this afternoon, lack of sleep really slows my brain down). So I ended up using heating packs. I was changing them out every 15 minutes all day long. Around 3 I realized it was the bulb that was causing problems with the inverter so I switched it to a regular bulb and was able to relax a little bit.

Overall, I cannot believe my hatch rate. All but two of the eggs that had pipped before the power went out has hatched and lived. Out of 32 eggs that went into lockdown, 7 never pipped, 2 died after pipping, and 23 are live and well. Considering that in the past 48 hours my humidity has gone from 45% to 100% down to 20% then bounced all around, but never higher than 40% in the past 18 hours while the last 7 have hatched. And temps have been anywhere from 72* to 101*. I think that I will never stress about a batch as much as I have will this one. Obviously the numbers just don't matter as much as I thought they did.

 

[Cattitude]

What a beautiful group of fuzzy butts!

We didn't do so well; we had 6 of 15 hatch down at the Farm. The tally isn't in yet on the friend who set 22 of our eggs in her Sportsman, but so far we have 8 from that hatch and several more pipped. Big R (Roosevelt's first daughter *we hope*) is 3 weeks old now, and she still towers over her two hatchmates. I'll try to get pics tomorrow!

Good hatching to all, and congrats on the new babies!

 

[Chick-a-roos]

This is the first time we have let one of our girls sit on eggs!

Meet Daphne and the 3 peeps (Silkie x cochin).
We let her have 3 eggs...haha thinking she would probably only hatch 1 but to our surprise Barney was doing his job!

 

[mandieg4]

In a million years I would have never believed it. The two eggs that had pipped but didn't do anything all day yesterday throughout the whole power outage fiasco actually hatched last night. When the power came back on I cleaned up the incubator and through the four that had hatched earlier and those two eggs back in the incubator just one the off chance. I really didn't expect them to hatch, they had been so dry and so cold for several hours. But some how they made it.

 

[Cattitude]

Nature finds a way!

 

[maryrob]

QUESTION!!!!!
one of my EE babies has feathers on its feet like our rooster----would it be safe to say that it might be a rooster too?

it si so funny watching the 4 that hatched-- i walk to the cage that i have them in and the first born runs to the front as if it was charging at me to warn me--

then it gets the others started to jump around and flap their little wings!!!

 

[chickpeaz]

I had another one hatch yesterday -- on day 26! Just goes to show you that you shouldn't give up on them too soon. It pipped early Sunday morning and made no progress on its own. I thought it was dead and Monday night I asked DH to unplug the bator and toss the remaining eggs. He yelled up the steps that the pipped one was breathing and chirping faintly, so I had him leave everything as it was. Tuesday morning it had still not done anything but I could hear it peeping every once in a while, so I helped it hatch out. It's probably not the healthiest chick ever. There was a little blood around its belly (I'm guessing just some unabsorbed yolk sac with vessels) but it quit bleeding pretty quickly and was up and active within about an hour. It's a little wobbly today and has some crooked toes I need to think about taping. But if it hangs in there, I'll feel ok about helping it out.

So I had 20 go in the bator, 3 candled clear so 17 made it to lockdown, and only 7 hatched. My worst hatch so far. But 7 babies is better than no babies at all!

 

[Wild Trapper]

Officially end of hatch here. DW left me a note to get the stinking thing out of the house.

It was stinking bad by today. I had cleaned out most of the shells and all the chicks yesterday and only had 6 eggs left but had to add water. Then last night after all that junk was removed and water added, one more did hatch.

It was one of my DIL's that had pipped. Of her ten eggs, she ended up with six hatched, three dead due to shrink wrap (I'm guessing) and one turned out undeveloped. Of my 26 there were 23 that hatched, two dead but unhatched, (shrink wrapped), and one undeveloped or infertile. Wondering why I didn't catch those when I candled, most have rushed it and not looked close enough. Except for the loss of those unhatched, I am happy enough that the hatch went much better than my first attempt last fall. Only two of the eggs didn't develop into anything and we lost 6 due to hatching problems, gotta work on that part or buy a Brinsea. After the problems with the Hova-Bator, I am seriously thinking along the line of either modifying it so I can add water through a port of some kind or upgrading to the Brinsea. Finding dead unpipped eggs with fully developed chicks is a real bummer.

But there are 29

little fussy butts, some looking a lot like chipmunks

out there in the brooder box now.

 

[jettgirl24]

Chickpeaz - You're making me think there's a little hope for the two of mine that haven't hatched... Hope they do! It's now day 24 and I've got nothing as of this morning when I left for work. Who knows, maybe there will be a surprise when I get home...

I've got the lonely hatcher in the brooder with the Salmon Faverolle I got at the feed store to keep it company. It will be very interesting to see what the Fav looks like when it gets big... Not looking very cute right now. It was being picked on in the bin by the other chicks who were a bit older. She has CRAZY long wing feathers but they're all scraggly at the tips and a swollen, irritated vent which is fortunately almost cleared up now. Her face is adorable, hopefully the rest of her will be cute too once she's had some more loving care

Turned my webcam to the brooder: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chicken-hatching-eggs. They're spending a lot of time at the other end though so I'm thinking my heat lamp is a bit too warm... I'll have to adjust when I get home!

 

[emjay]

Well, some of my babies are leaving me today to go to new homes. will be sad to see the cuties go, but, less mouths to feed and more room in brooder.
Here's hoping she doesn't go home with all roosters

been an interesting April Fools hatch along !! been fun, might have to do this again.