TeaChick's Chicks

[Mr MKK FARMS]

Gavroche?

Yup, from Les Miserables.

 

[TeaChick]

I'm still super excited about my chicks hatching!!! I check on them all day. I'm glad I don't work away from home or anything!!! I'd be a mess. lol I'll get a picture of them being all fluffed out now. =)
I still have them in the incubator, but I'm going to have to put food and water in there soon and I'm going to have to give them more space "soon".
Snoodle's just sitting there. I thought I heard peeping from the brooder last night, but when I started getting close she bawked (IDK how to spell that) quietly (like she has been all along) and I couldn't figure out whether the chirping I had heard was from the Cochin chicks in the box under the brooder or the Wren chicks in the nest up in the eaves or whether maybe, just maybe, she had actually hatched out at least one chick and that was the chirping.

Please hatch at least one egg, Snoodle!!!!! Please let me know that your sitting hasn't been in vain!!!
Oh, I'm treating her for cocci. I have to syringe tiny amounts of Corid water into her beak several times a day and she's a little paler today than she was yesterday. IDK; I don't want to lose her, but it would just stress her more if I tried to break her brood at this point. So, I will just pray that God helps me with her and that His Will is done and that He will give me the strength to handle whatever that is.

On the bright side, I did get my philosophy paper turned in yesterday; my instructor said that, in light of my medical problems, he wouldn't penalize me for it being late! =D Next week I have a discussion board and, I think, one reply. So, I've got to get started studying.

 

[Mr MKK FARMS]

Okay good luck with all that you are taking on in life.

You must be worn out.

 

[TeaChick]

Okay good luck with all that you are taking on in life.

You must be worn out.

Thanks.
lol
I don't get worn out easily. And mostly what's going on is good exciting, not bad exciting. KWIM? I do need to be careful of what I eat and make sure I drink lots of water and exercise, but I've known that for decades.

 

[TeaChick]

Update:
Snoodle: I had to take her eggs the day before yesterday.

She had pecked one.

I put them in the incubator. The one that she had pecked stunk up my incubator. So, I candled the other two while the incubator aired out a little and warmed back up. I found that one of those two had...I don't know what to call it...a secondary air cell? It was like a mini air cell (it might have been water or something else) in the part of the egg where the chick lives, plus the regular air cell. So, I threw that away. The third one looked alright (good air cell, "full" of chick, etc.), so I put it back in the incubator. It didn't have any mark on it (I had written the dates on all but the last two with crayon, the second to the last one I used pencil, the last one [laid on the 12th] I didn't get to mark), so assuming it was laid last on Saturday the twelfth, yesterday would have been day 21. This morning, I started opening it according to the article on assisted hatching and it smelled, so I stopped after removing a little bit of the shell and put it in a ziploc bag and threw it in the garbage. =( No chicks from Snoodle's first brood.

Maybe next time???

Moving forward, I think that I will start replacing eggs, laid by a hen that looks like she might want to go broody, with golf balls. When she's been seriously setting for a few days, then I'll give her the eggs I want chicks from.

Hopefully, that will ensure that I get the eggs I want and that they (at least mostly) hatch around the same time. I would still have the incubator ready for any unhatched, potentially viable eggs. Oh, and I'll mark with pencil instead of crayon.

As far as Snoodle goes, she has five toes. I've been told that Cochin SOP is four toes. Apparently, there's another breed in there somewhere, but I don't know which breeds have five toes. If anyone knows, then please let me know. =) Oh, and she looks terrible from her post-broody molt.

I lost one of my white Leghorn cockerels yesterday; I'm down to six. They're for meat, so I'm not too worried about it, but it's disappointing.

I have pictures of my white Cochin chicks. I'm thinking more and more that they might not be Bantams. I kind of hope they're large fowl; that will make it easier to hatch large fowl layer eggs under them when they go broody.

Robert Downey, Jr (pullet?) Prima Donna (pullet?) Lavender (cockerel?)
If anyone can confirm or disagrees with DD, please let me know.


The dark Cochin Bantams are doing well. They're still in the indoor brooder and it's plenty big enough for all of them. lol They're so cute. They're feathering out and looking pretty. It looks like I have at least one pullet and cockerel each of black and barred.

My most recent hatchlings are doing well too. According to feather sexing, I have three pullets. Let's all hope. The yellow one has a brownish-reddish cast to the down on her back. We think the light chipmunk color one will look about like Eddie and the dark one will look about like Georgette (the chipmunk chick from the mostly Leghorn hatch).
This is their brooder. That's them; click to see them better. This is me holding them.

I still need to make a list of all the hens and pullets and to decide which cockerels/roosters I want to put them with. Obviously, at first anyway, I will keep each color of Cochin separate. Otherwise, I was thinking of giving Eddie to someone who needs a good free range rooster, but DH and I have too much respect for how good a rooster he's been for us to get rid of him. So, if he adjusts well to being penned (which there's no reason to expect him not to), we'll keep him. I might breed him back to Georgette and see how GLW I can get the chicks??? Just an idea.

So, here's what my list of flocks will look like when I get the pens built and the chickens separated:
~ Black Cochin Bantams
~ Barred Cochin Bantams
~ White Cochins (possibly bantams)
{Snoodle will go into one of the Bantam pens; then I'll be able to get some frizzled babies and eventually a frizzled roo, then start mating him to some LF hens and work some frizzle into some of my other lines.}
~ Eddie's flock (Probably with the Leghorn hens and Georgette)
~ Marty's flock (Definitely DS's pullet of the same color and therefore his other pullet by default, also maybe the brown splash pullet from the mostly Leghorn hatch)
~ Easter Egger rooster's flock (I'll want at least one hen of each egg color in with him, so Caramel [pink-ish brown], and at least one hen each of brown and white egg color)

So, now to add pictures and emoticons.
All set. Hope you've enjoyed this. =)
Please let me know what you think and what's going on with you all!!! =D

 

[TeaChick]

This is not really an update, I guess, just touching base with whomever keeps up with my thread. I don't have a lot of time on BYC right now, so I'm down to posting what's going on with me and my chickens here and answering PMs. I'm sorry to anyone who doesn't read this and worries about me.

I just finished my philosophy discussion board post. I'm the first one to post, and the assignment is not due until Thursday; however, our replies are due the next day, so I hope that my posting today will encourage the other students in my group to post sooner rather than later. I need a good post to reply to. =)

The chickens and chicks are doing well. I put the hatchlings in with the dark Cochin Bantam chicks, even though there's 5 weeks difference in their ages. Being Bantams, they're closer to the size of the hatchlings than LF chicks would be at six weeks old. Otherwise, I wouldn't have done that.

Snoodle still looks terrible. She's got that post brood molt thing going on. =( She's also being chased by both of the roosters. =( I hope she's back to her old, nice self soon!!!

 

[Mr MKK FARMS]

Will you find more time to come on soon?

Thank you for telling us. Hope Snoodle gets better soon!

 

[TeaChick]

I'm finishing Summer semester this week. Fall semester starts Monday. For the past two months, I've had one class; for the next two months, I'll have two classes. It's not looking good.

Thanks. I'm sure she will be.

 

[Mr MKK FARMS]

I'm finishing Summer semester this week. Fall semester starts Monday. For the past two months, I've had one class; for the next two months, I'll have two classes. It's not looking good.

Thanks. I'm sure she will be.

No problem. Yeah. If you can't keep on the threads much, can you please PM me lots?

 

[TeaChick]

No problem. Yeah. If you can't keep on the threads much, can you please PM me lots?

Thanks.

Sure. =)




I didn't get to do much with my chickens today. I didn't even get to let them out; I had to ask DD to do that for me. (Dear Daughter)
I took my last philosophy quiz today. 36/60 Yup, you read right; I got a 60%/D-. =( Hopefully I can get full credit on the discussion board; I posted my original post yesterday, now I just have to wait for someone to post something worth replying to.
Snoodle still looks rough, but she's ranging around the yard and dust bathing and talking up a storm; she's making more noise and different sounds than I've ever heard her make before! I guess she'll be back to laying in a couple of weeks or something.