Pipd's Peeps!

[Soon2BChixMom]

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Good morning! We're up to 3 babies this morning! One hatched around 6:30 this morning, and the other at some point between midnight and 6:30. Nothing from the last egg yet. I think I may try water candling it to see if there's any movement in there.

For now, a terrible cell pic of the first three (reddish because my red curtains were still drawn)! I need to take care of the big girls and finish up the brooder, and then the babies will move out for better pictures.

Oh, and the video finished uploading overnight, so I'll get that posted in a bit, too!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Whoops, promises, promises! Needless to say, I got side tracked (it IS Mother's Day, after all, and I needed to do something for my mom. ), but I'm here now with a few baby pictures and that video! First, the video! Y'all will probably want to turn the volume off as the fan in the incubator is LOUD. Also, I may or may not have gone 'awww' when baby hatched, and you would spare me my dignity in muting that. I apologize for the cage wire in the way--if I had been thinking about it, I would have recorded from the other side of the bator. Aaaanyway, here it is:

Now, babies are still within 24 hours of hatching, so they aren't coming out from under the EcoGlow much yet. I have pictures, but not very many. Not to worry, there will be tons more as they grow! I have leg bands on them, although I think they'll be pretty easy to tell apart without them. The first to hatch has a white leg band, second has pink, and third has blue. Not sure if any of them are visible in these pictures, but I may refer to them as their leg band color (it just sounds better than SC5 or SC1 or SC3, as their eggs were labelled).

Here is first to hatch when I moved her from the incubator to the brooder. I wish my phone had focused on HER and not my shirt, though!

ARGH, I forgot how eensy bantam babies are compared to large fowl! I thought the Marans kiddos were small, but these three are positively tiny!!

This is mostly what I'm getting right now--babies under the EcoGlow. They've had a rough day.

"Do you mind?! We're tryin' to sleep!!"

And finally, either blue-band or pink-band in my hand. Can I get an "EEEEEE"?

Honestly, I think that Blue and Pink are going to be the sort-of blue / black-tailed red coloration like Rigby and Lucky. I have no idea what White is going to turn out as. Kind of interesting the variety that occurs with these little guys! Last time, I also got an incomplete buff-ish partridge (Abra) in the mix! I believe my next steps from here with these guys is going to be outcrossing to other Cochin bantam varieties to see what happens, and then crossing back for the Silkie trait. You know what that means, right? I need to get more varieties of Cochin bantams!

Oh, and I did a 'water candling' on the remaining two eggs. One I was already sure was dead (may or may not have posted that here?), the other I was afraid was dead as of yesterday. No movement, so I think I'm right. I went ahead and gave them safety holes and left them in the bator, but I can't see much more happening with them at this point. Oh, well. I have three precious peepers to love, either way.

 

[itspebbl]

I haven't been on BYC in a while, and as soon as I came back, I had to check this thread! So excited for your new babies, and the Marans!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Aw, thanks! It's been a pretty exciting spring so far with all these babies!




It's a nasty, dark, stormy day, so the babies are doing lots of napping under the EcoGlow. I'll see if I can convince them to come out for more pictures later.

 

[shadow rabbit10]

Yay new babies! Hope you are well Pipd. I haven't been on BYC in a while because my semester got very hectic (hard classes, mainly organic chem, lots of work, and personal issues). This is always the first thread I check when I come back though! The chicks are so cute!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Aw, sorry to hear! You survived, though! How did you do?








Time for a baby picture overload!! They are just way too cute, I can't stand it! All I want to do is sit by the brooder and wait for them to come out from under the EcoGlow so I can stare at them.

Err, anyway, pictures.

These first few aren't great quality, but they were too cute not to share. Cuddle time!

"Umm, excuse us, it's cuddle time, not picture time!"

Li'l white-band beeper says, "First the hoomans, then the world!!"

I had a giggle at this one. I think this is Blue band and White band. "Your hair smells good..."

Lined up at the waterer.

Hungry peep-peeps

The li'l grumpy faces!!

Blue and Pink peepers were being super cute peeking out from under the EcoGlow and I couldn't decide which pose was cutest, so here are all of them!!

Then White-band appeared out of nowhere to say. "What'cha doin', guys?"

I feel like I interrupted an important discussion.

LOOKIT THE TINY BABIES IN MY LAP!!

And finally, here is how they were snuggled down for bed when I checked on them after closing the coops for the night. Night-night, beebies!

 

[shadow rabbit10]

Aw, sorry to hear! You survived, though! How did you do?

I did great in most of my classes. A's in all of them except organic chem which I got a C+ in. My first C ever actually. But hey I'm just glad to be done with it. How was your semester? Ahh the babies are cute!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Aw, same happened to me in o chem, it gave me my first C. Stinkin' class! I have all A's so far this semester. I need to check, as one of my classes was delayed at being recorded, but I'm relatively sure I have an A in it as well. When I submitted my final, I couldn't get anything less than a high B in the class already, so my final score should have taken it to A. It was a pretty easy semester, though, just super busy because of all the things I had to do in that last month or so.


Babies make everything better! It's so hard to do anything but sit and stare at them! I didn't take many pictures of them yesterday because of that (well, and I was getting tests done for the chick sexing experiment). The first thing I did when I woke up this morning was peek in at them. I caught them at breakfast.

Munching munchkins. They have a lot of growing to do!!

Of course, inevitably, if I have my hand in the brooder to take pictures they must run over!

The EcoGlow makes for so many cute pictures.

These two pictures made me laugh. It looks like they're passing secrets.

Just like the last group of silkied Cochins, I got a surprise this morning! At 4 days old, little Pink leg band is crowing! I heard this high-pitched peeping under the EcoGlow and figured someone was getting stepped on or poked at, so I pushed the babies out from under it just in time to see him arch his neck and let loose! I tried really hard to get a recording of it, but Pinkie got shy as soon as the camera was on him and kept running back under the EcoGlow instead. I'll try again tomorrow. Guess I'll have to stop using the pink bands for baby leg bands--they always end up on roosters!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

It was the babies first brooder cleaning day! Or, in other words, I flipped the towels they're on. Bad news on the babies, though--they're growing!! Getting little wing feathers already, and they just look so much bigger. Why, oh why can't they stay eensy-weensy-teeny-tiny li'l munchkins? Check out the little baby wings! You can't really see it well in this picture, but their feet are getting baby feathers in already, too.

They're big enough that little White band did this already!! In other words, the EcoGlow shall no longer remain clean on top.

"Who, me?"

Apparently the tap-tapping of little feet above their heads had Blue and Pink a little concerned.

Of course, the clean brooder couldn't last too long...

White is getting into all kinds of shenanigans, apparently. Here she is, very innocently standing in the food dish--notice the little dropping in the feed.

And, of course, there are many of these pictures being logged these days. The camera lens is just so shiny!

Ah, but they are still just so stinkin' adorable!

This face kills me!!

In grown-up chicken news, the girls have found a new place to nest these days. Behind the coop door on the deck. I suppose it does fit within my rules for nesting--it's in the coop (technically) and not under the roosts in the poop... Here's Callette pulling her best innocent face when I found her back there. What a Dork!

I'm starting to think about whether I want to try the Dorkings again for hatching, and since the munchkins didn't hatch so well, whether I want to do more of them, too. I'm kind of debating on the silkied Cochins if it would be better to get some smooth Cochin bantams to cross in for some new blood. I'm not sure why they didn't hatch so well this time, but I do know that about half of those eggs were line-bred from Abra (meaning she was crossed to her father, Roscoe), and half didn't hatch. Not sure if that's a coincidence or evidence that these guys, rare as they are, are just too inbred. I also keep going back to the fact that I locked down about 4 days early, and whether that had an impact... Anyway, right now all I'm sure of is it's going to wait until August if I do hatch or buy more babies--no babies hatching or distracting me with the cuteness while I'm trying to focus on Physics this summer! I need to get that class over with!!