Glad your boy figured it out and I hear you about wanting your birds to start laying! I'm thinking ANY time now! I'm ready to incubate/hatch some silkies and the miserable birds are not laying! Ack!!
Very cute! Where's the pictures of your coop?? Love the crochet cowboy hat! That is adorable!Ok finally some pictures!! These are only five of the eight. The other three are in a separate area for the whole quarantine thing. I have more pictures of the coop and other birds on my other camera which I will get on here later. These five gave us 3 eggs yesterday and this was their first week laying. None today though...I am thinking the cold weather?? In any case, yay!!!!
And my cute baby wearing his crochet cowboy hat lol. Farmer Josiah!
Your birds look pretty happy! Oh no! I didn't know you'd lost some birds! I'm so sorry!! Just wet feed, well, that's not good.Bottom line was they weren't getting FF, they were getting wet feed that sat. Not good. Their health went right to heck in a hanky. We've had a conversation, but now I'm watching her more closely. I just got too busy to supervise properly. Of all the birds to lose, it's always the favorites. Poor little Lucy. I loved that little girl. She was so cute -- always looked like she was wearing a tea length dress.
medawinks and mommahen, Sometimes life just spins out of control. It's so nice to hear from both of you again! Sorry to hear about the health issues.
It's a really kind of sleepy day around here. We just had DD's second birthday party and I'm beat. I'm happy to have my house back to just us. I just put my second batch of eggs in the bator. I set the first batch a week ago and I've decided to collect eggs every 7 days. I'm getting some Swedish, Black split Ameraucanas, barnyard mixes and ducks. I'm ready for my Germans to start laying. They laid one egg and then nothing and it's been weeks so they better stop slacking and get with it -- all two of them!
I need to look back at the hoop house build instructions. I'd really like to get one or two of those built this week. It's a little chilly so I'll need to bundle up. I'd like to get it done while DS is home on spring break this week. Yay for help!
Your quote on "life spinning out of control"-- I'm right there in it! And where we land.... NObody knows!!! That's the crazy thing about what we are dealing with-- not knowing what we're going to be doing. Ah well. So fun you did all of that for the birthday party! I like it when we have company-- it's FUN! But I also like it when we are quiet and things are back to normal, too. I soooo want to build a hoop house-- or two or three. But it's really looking like it isn't going to happen here. But so neat they go up so fast! And I think they are so charming!I agree with Danz!! I candle all of my shipped eggs when I get them in. You can smear Elmer's white glue or wax over the hair line cracks. I look over shipped eggs carefully, because you'd be surprised how they look once you can see how the post office handled them. I've had good luck with wax, but I have friends who swear by the Elmer's glue over the cracks, too. They smear it on, but you want to be careful to ONLY cover the cracks, and not the rest of the egg, because the shell needs to breathe.So any news on the split egg? It is a wonder any of those eggs developed. Can you tell if the chick is alive. I lost some eggs due to that storm as well plus sent some duck eggs I don't think faired very well in it.
Posted by mrsdanamiller
Nice girls and nicer boy!!
Kind of a busy day but a good one. Mammahen and some of her cherubs came and got some chicks, eggs, a rooster, and a dog. I made some more money to help pay for my new birds! Yay! I love visiting with her and her kids are awesome. Her son carried some feed bags for me. You can't beat that. I also got some home made bread and some milk out of the deal. Awesome. I am sending you a PM Mammahen. I forgot to give you vet papers.
If it had a hairline crack that you missed, it likely died from bacteria that got in. Or it just could have been one of those "one off's" where they die, and it looks odd, but the rest of the hatch was fine. In which case, you don't want that bird to survive anyway.Well, the cracked egg ended up cracking even more within an hour. Then cracked in another direction. I asked for help on a FB forum and a few folks had me convinced that the egg was getting ready to explode and I needed to get it out of the incubator. So I took it out even though I was sure it wasn't a bad egg because we candled it and it was very alive on Friday. Well then a few other FB folks said maybe it was trying to hatch and I needed to help it. So I put it back in the incubator until I could figure out what to do. By that time a triangular chunk of the shell had popped off. A FB person told me to peel back the membrane to try to help it out. I did but it was already dead. One thing I noticed is that there didn't appear to be any air cell. The chick filled up the egg- almost as if it had grown so much that it busted the egg open. Is that possible? It is my understanding from reading lots of material that the lack of an air cell is d/t too high humidity. Is this correct? However, when I looked at my "test" barnyard egg (non-shipped) it looks wonderful as far as the air cell is concerned. Well, so then we noticed that a 2nd egg was cracked on the underside. I rolled it slightly over and it had liquid coming out of a small hole in the cracked area. I don't know how long it had been cracked so I left it. Now the crack has closed up.
So sorry! Best thing we did was to dig all of our electrical and put it underground out to the chicken house and barn. Doesn't even have to be that deep. You don't need a trencher. Now, we did get a trencher, but only because our neighbor is a plumber and he's pretty handy to have near by! I'm so sorry about your sebbie! That is terrible luck!
So funny about your broodies! I think you have a good plan worked out for them. Crazy they went broody while you were gone! I have a hatchery barred rock that is broody!!! She was sitting on all the eggs the girls had laid and then growled and pecked at my oldest when he went to get them. They were all warm from her sitting on them. Sheesh!!! Isn't that nuts?!?! I wish I had some fertile eggs for her to give a go at. I'll check back out there in a while and if she's still sitting on air, I'll throw in all the silkie eggs I've collected... I don't think they are fertile, but she can give them a go and maybe one or two will be. I think your airport eggs is amazing! We do a lot of traveling, so it'll be fun to give it a try!It did occur to me that with no one collecting eggs, it might give a hen or two the idea to go broody. It never occurred to me a duck might go broody, but I returned home to find not one, but two broody ducks! I wish they'd waited just a little longer and can't help thinking if I had been here collecting eggs they might have given me a few more eggs before going broody. The first duck I found broody is the only one I knew for sure was laying, and sure enough, she was sitting on a small mountain of eggs. I had to reach under her and pull out all the chicken eggs and it was kind of surreal because my ducks are NOT handleable at all and will normally stay way out of touching range of me but she is so broody that there was no way she was budging from the nest so even when I was half lifting her off to see what else was under her (this is by flashlight at 5:30 in the morning!) all she did was give these kind of moans - a sound I've never heard the ducks make before - but as soon as I set her back down with only duck eggs under her, she gathered them back up under her and looked happy again. Then I turned around and found another duck on another nest and had to go through the same thing with her. This duck was not laying before I left as far as I know and was sitting on a total of 8 eggs but only one of them was a duck egg. I'm thinking she laid one egg and immediately went broody. Grrr. So no more duck eggs for eating, unless the two remaining ducks start to lay me some eggs. I'm thinking about taking the one egg away from her and giving it to the first broody and then putting some eggs under the second duck that were collected before we left and have been sitting at room temperature ever since. That way I can give her a bigger clutch to sit on without it being a staggered hatch.
By the time I got done collecting eggs from all the nests, it was more eggs than my egg basket can hold - I've never seen that many eggs from my coop before.
I had left my Rcom incubator in its final week of incubating and love how automatic this thing is, that I was able to go away for that long and trust that it would keep on taking care of the eggs in my absence. My only concern was that they were due to go in lockdown Sunday morning and I wouldn't be home until the early hours of Monday morning. I hoped that none of the chicks would pip while I had the turner on and humidity low, but didn't want to turn the turner off before we left. The Rcom has an option of turning every 1hr, 2hr or 3hr, so I thought the best thing was to set it for every 3 hours and that way if the chicks were trying to position themselves for hatch, they would be able to do it without getting turned every hour - best I could do. When we got back, even before I went out to the coop, I added water to the incubator, upped the humidity for hatching and turned off the turner. I opened it briefly to take out the dividers to make it easier for them to hatch and heard a muffled "peep" when I did. With the lid back on I sat for a moment and watched the eggs rocking and rolling as the chicks move around inside. There is now one egg pipped so I guess I got here just in the nick of time. Deerfield, I hope your brooder is ready for chicks because they're almost here!
I don't know if I've told the story of these eggs on here but this is an 18-count that I smuggled through airport security in my carry on luggage as a sort of experiment to see if anything would hatch, the idea being that if this works out okay, it is a better option for eggs than shipping them (assuming of course you will be traveling anyway - obviously not a cost effective way otherwise).
So the brief story on these eggs is that I took the 18-count and double wrapped it in two plastic bags in case of breakage. Then in my small "suitcase" that is a carry on bag, I placed a layer of clothes on the bottom, the 18-count of eggs, and then more clothes on top so that they were packed in really tightly. I figured the less they could move around in there the better. Then I wheeled the bag to an airport shuttle where the driver picked it up and threw it in the back of the van before I could utter the words "careful with that!" At the airport, I wheeled it until I got to security, then put it on the belt to go through the x-ray. From there it was wheeled for long stretches to get to the right gate and went on the first plane in the overhead compartment. At the connecting airport, the bag was wheeled along endless passages in one terminal, then onto a train to change terminals, then wheeled to the gate, where I learned that the flight into Wichita was a tiny commuter jet and they weren't allowing anything bigger than a purse to be carried on - everything else had to be gate checked. I carefully handed my bag to the loader, who seemed to carefully put it on his cart but I'm sure once passengers are out of sight, they throw those bags to get the plane loaded faster. Upon arrival in Wichita, I expected to pick up the gate checked bags immediately but we were told they would be coming off the carousel, so I had to wait 20 minutes for my bag. My suitcase came down the carousel upside down and I just knew the eggs were goners, so I grabbed my bag, headed for the exit and didn't even open the suitcase until next day. When I did, I found that the eggs were completely unscathed. Not a broken egg among them, not even a crack. My incubator had arrived in my absence so I set it up, loaded in the eggs and away we went. I was stunned on first candling to find all but one developing. Last week I candled again, before we left, and all looked good except one that I think quit developing around day 10. I left it in there but don't expect it to hatch.
Anyway, although the experiment is not complete until we have live chicks, just the fact that they will develop after a journey like that seems promising. I keep telling myself that all the jostling they got on that trip was surely less than they get at the hands of the USPS. So - if you have travel plans and there is a breeder in the area you are going, it seems to me that picking up eggs and carrying them back yourself may be a better way to go than having them shipped.
I have a ton of stuff I need to do now that we're back and I wish the forecast wasn't for more wintry weather coming up but so it goes. I guess I've had my four hours sleep and its time to get back out there. Have a good day everyone.
If anybody in Wichita area ia interested in these I would like a couple but no way can travel to get them. If somebody else goes I'd like you to pick up 2 thanksBy sheer luck yesterday I got two auracauna pullets for 5 bucks a piece. They just started laying. This man is getting rid if them and has quite a few more if anyone is interested. Rumpless and beautiful blue eggs!
The time factor shouldn't be a biggie at this time. If you didn't SCRUB them, again, it might be ok. Warm water. if not too hot, is what you need IF you ever wash hatchiing eggs anyway. It keeps the egg from obsorbing any bacteria. I have carefully washed a lot of duck and goose eggs I put in the incubator. I always just ran warm water over them and carefully rubbed any dirt off with my fingers. Sometimes it is better to wash carefully than to put a ton of nasty in that warm invironment. Anyway, all you have to lose if you put the egg back under her is the egg and you might get a duckling.Deerfield, sorry to hear about the loss of Lucy - I know how special she was to you
Hawkeye, I bet a number of us could fix you up with fertile eggs. I could give you any number of barnyard mutt eggs but don't have anything purebred right now. I'm looking forward to the Frank Reece BR's getting going, and hatching some of their eggs. That is so funny about a broody hatchery BR, but it happens. My very first broody was a hatchery black sexlink - the bird in my flock I least expected to go broody - but she did a great job. Actually, she was the best broody and mother I've ever had to date. So sorry your silkies aren't laying yet - I think this weather has a lot to do with it - hot one day, cold the next. Once temperatures stabilize out a little more and spring is really here, I bet they'll take off like gangbusters.
I just washed all the eggs I collected by flashlight at 5:30 this morning as the nest box was so full that at least one egg broke and there was egg goo over a lot of the eggs. I don't normally wash but felt I had to in this case. I put all the eggs in a sink of warm water and started washing them one by one and found a duck egg in there. I'm kind of upset I took a duck egg out from under a broody and now I think its too late to put it back. Even if sitting out at room temperature for 6 hours hadn't hurt it, the warm water bath, washing off the bloom can't be good for it.
Thanks Chickies. I actually don't know what to think. At 5:30 this morning they both seemed completely broody, allowing me to pick them up off their nests, when they wouldn't normally tolerate being handled at all. The "first" broody had feathers plucked to make a lovely cozy nest and was in every way acting totally broody. Yet when I went down to see them again just now, neither was on the nest nor acting broody at all. I'm actually quite happy for them not to be broody yet but its weird they were acting so much that way just a few hours ago.
I'm glad the hen is doing fine now and thanks for the tip on the crayon!
