Broody “sisters”

[Cool-breeze7]

I’ve been out of town this week when they should hatch. By my math they should have started hatching on Tuesday. No dice. However as I write this, being Friday morning, my wife has told me there are two chicks this morning. Im still hoping for more but given this is an excitement, I'm happy to get any chicks. Now to see if mama can keep them alive .

 

[Cool-breeze7]

Sadly this story does not end well. The short story is I think ants killed off all my chicks except one that’s in an incubator now.

Now I’ll rant a bit: I went back to my calendar notes and Monday should have been their hatch day. Saturday morning I went to see the chicks after getting in late Friday night. Could not find those 2 chicks. Being that Saturday was day 22 I decide to clean out the nest and hope those two chicks are hiding inside mama’s feathers somewhere. I left her 7 eggs. 2 hatched and are missing, leaving me with 5.

One of the eggs had started to unzip decently but failed. I was a bit surprised but didn’t think to much of it. Nor did I think much about the ants crawling all over it. I noticed for the remaining 4 one had just pipped. Decided to leave those 4 alone since things were still happening. Came back out a couple hours later. That egg got about half unzipped as well but was now dead and crawling with ants. Initially I thought being on day 22 that chick was exhausted and didn’t have the strength to finish the job.

I decided to epptopsy the other 3. One was a dud as expected. One failed probably around day 14. The 3rd was still alive! Fortunately I always try to open the egg at their air cell just in case. I placed that egg in my incubator but it’s fighting being shrink wrapped at this point.

I think where I went wrong is 1st I never considered ants to be a predator for quail. Pretty sure the egg yoke remains brought them in and those ants killed the two chicks hatching. 2nd I suspect I noticed the hen acting broody on a Friday but she didn’t brood consistently enough to begin incubating for a couple days. Had I considered my day 0 might be off a few days I would not have started an eggtopsy so soon.

Since I’ve got another hen starting to brood right now I guess it’s time I wage war on some ants.

 

[Aunt Angus]

Sadly this story does not end well. The short story is I think ants killed off all my chicks except one that’s in an incubator now.

Now I’ll rant a bit: I went back to my calendar notes and Monday should have been their hatch day. Saturday morning I went to see the chicks after getting in late Friday night. Could not find those 2 chicks. Being that Saturday was day 22 I decide to clean out the nest and hope those two chicks are hiding inside mama’s feathers somewhere. I left her 7 eggs. 2 hatched and are missing, leaving me with 5.

One of the eggs had started to unzip decently but failed. I was a bit surprised but didn’t think to much of it. Nor did I think much about the ants crawling all over it. I noticed for the remaining 4 one had just pipped. Decided to leave those 4 alone since things were still happening. Came back out a couple hours later. That egg got about half unzipped as well but was now dead and crawling with ants. Initially I thought being on day 22 that chick was exhausted and didn’t have the strength to finish the job.

I decided to epptopsy the other 3. One was a dud as expected. One failed probably around day 14. The 3rd was still alive! Fortunately I always try to open the egg at their air cell just in case. I placed that egg in my incubator but it’s fighting being shrink wrapped at this point.

I think where I went wrong is 1st I never considered ants to be a predator for quail. Pretty sure the egg yoke remains brought them in and those ants killed the two chicks hatching. 2nd I suspect I noticed the hen acting broody on a Friday but she didn’t brood consistently enough to begin incubating for a couple days. Had I considered my day 0 might be off a few days I would not have started an eggtopsy so soon.

Since I’ve got another hen starting to brood right now I guess it’s time I wage war on some ants.

Oh, I'm so sorry! What a terrible ending.