Icelandic Chickens

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I love those guys the most! We had a power failure for several hours on Thursday night. We hooked the incubator and brooder up to the generator but it ran out of gas in the early morning hours. I found one chick in the brooder stiff, legs straight out to the side and barely breathing. I grabbed him and he was ice cold. I put him in my pocket while we got gas, got the generator going again, and fed the donkeys. When we got back to the house I wrapped him a washcloth and laid him on the hearth to die comfortably. About a half hour later Michael said "your chick is making a lot of noise." What the heck? I went in and he was struggling to get free of his washcloth funeral shroud. I quickly set him up in the little brooder in my office and began giving him water with chick-saver, ACV, scrambled eggs, polyvisol, etc. The next day he and four others had horrible cases of pasty butt. I kept them all in the small brooder and cleaned their behinds several times a day. Three have recovered sufficiently to return to the big brooder in the coop. The little dead guy and one other have been really bad but they seem to have improved today. They are so tiny that they can't hold the weight of their wings up. But they are partying up a storm in the brooder. Here is my little dead guy tonight! I should name him Lo-Rida with those wings scraping the ground.

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Andy, Bubba sounds like he'll be the family favorite!!
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No rehoming for him!

Mary, Lukka probably heard you mentioning the eggs and figured she'd show you that you didn't need that incubator with Utimate Mom in the house!
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Will this be the biggest clutch she's sat? Wonder what she'll think of the "non-Icelandics"?

Camelot,
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60 x 20, wow, lucky you!! The new chicks are very cute!

Sounds like the Icelandics are spreading across the U.S. quickly!!
 
Sadly, Lukka was off the nest this morning. She left one cool egg which she had somehow managed to hold onto and keep it from rolling back out of reach. She usually gives broodiness a try for a few days before becoming serious. With roll out nest boxes it makes it hard to accumulate a clutch, which is probably a good thing! Hopefully she'll go on with business as normal and wait until "real" Spring to raise some babies. And I may just offer these eggs up on auction as "test" eggs. I am so busy cleaning poopy butts with these two little guys in the house that I really can't handle a whole lot more!

I have 14 eggs due to hatch today! I opened the bator last night and briefly candled them to see if they were still alive after Thursday's power outage. Amazingly all fourteen are moving but I see a lot of red veins still and liquid so I think they may be a day or so late from it. I do not have any pips yet, which is odd for Icelandics. We'll see what happens.
 
I have been feeling a bit guilty lately for using BYC to post my silly pictures and stories unrelated to chickens. So, I resurrected my old blog, Living Country in the City and renamed it Chicken Squawk. I had been posting regularly since 2009 but took the last ten months off. I am back at it and if you are interested, the link is in my signature. Just to whet your appetite, yesterday's post is about these guys:

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Re the stray dog, another excellent reason for having a livestock guardian dog, many breeds will do it well, guard your animals and birds while keeping others away.

I have been reading the thread, slowly working my way through, a fascinating breed !
 

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