Today (April 5th) is day 21 & we have 2 chicks under Mama so far!

[deborah]

We are so excited! Today is Day 21 and when we went out to the henhouse this morning, this is what we found:

One more has hatched since then and they are both dry and fluffy. Hopefully we will have more by the end of the day.

Thank you FrizzledHen so much for the fertilized eggs.

 

[speckledhen]

Aw, how sweet!

 

[Illinois_ Kelly]

Yay! I love happy endings. I actually just saw this post and was going to give some advice on the broken egg/ sticky situation but I went on to read there was no longer a need for it. Beautiful chick and TWO happy mother hens.

Keep sharing the pics. We love them here!

Kelly

 

[jab91864]

Congratulations !!!!!!!!!!!

~Julie

 

[RioLindoAz]

My chicks were due today too but they all hatched 2 days early

 

[Zookeeper9000]

Can we get an update please. Thanks and congrats

 

[MsMcChick]

Great job!! Now you just have to explain to the barnyard why the kids don't look like Mom

Whats the tally up to now?

 

[deborah]

It's the morning of day 22 and we now have 5 chicks.

We learned a hard lesson yesterday. We tried to help the 3rd one hatch. It was doing ok, but we were impatient. It went badly and the chick died. When Mama went broody we said we would "let her do it" and we should have stuck to that. I really think if we had left that chick alone she/he would have made it.

By late afternoon there were 3 pips. It took a lot of willpower, but we left them alone. And we were rewarded with 3 more chicks this morning! Three more eggs have pips and I can see one chick's beak moving in the egg. (The blue egg near the front in the picture). Fortunately, we have plans today and will be gone until the late afternoon. We won't have to fight the temptation to see what is happening (and if we can help). Hopefully we will have 3 more chicks by evening.

So of 14 eggs:
We lost 2 before they started hatching.
We have 5 very cute hatched chicks
1 died during the bungled hatch
3 pips working to hatch right now.
3 more eggs??? (Two of those still have some residue from the broken egg)

This was a first time for us to try to hatch chicks. If we do it again, we will do a lot of things differently. We have learned a lot. I think we are very lucky to have as many chicks as we do considering the mistakes we have made. We can thank FrizzledHen for the good fertilized eggs and Mama for doing such a good job her first time in spite of our bungles. We also thank everyone of the Forum for their encouragement.

I will post more pictures this evening, hopefully with 8 chicks! Even though we had that big disappointment yesterday, I am very excited again.

 

[Frizzledhen]

eeeeeee
What a good momma! Congratulations Deb. I think we all have felt that need to help and as the saying goes, "live and learn". Sometimes it works and other times we wish we had stayed out of it for just a little longer. When a broody is sitting eggs I never even go near her for 24 hours after the first egg hatches. It is the bator eggs I have a hard time leaving alone. I really need someone to slap me at times.

When you get home today I bet you have lots more fuzzy faced little peeps.

 

[LittleLola]

Congrats!!