Too Early for Feb Hatch-A-Long Thread??

[LilyD]

We bred all our dual purpose hens/pullets with our jersey giant. We have 3 of his chicks left since all the others sold. I'm going to process one of them since I think it's a cockerel. The chick is HUGE! I need to get pics and I'll post it on here. It's just a massive bird and so tall. My husband said the Jersey giant roo was trying to mate with it so maybe it's a Pullet. I haven't been able to take a real close look at it yet, but maybe if I get pics y'all can help me.

If it's a Pullet I'll keep it, if not it'll be processed. It's huge! You definitely can tell it's part jersey giant.

There are studies that show that breeding two birds from different breeds together can cause hybrid vigor and the chick can outperform both parents. It's a great way to go.

 

[FortCluck]

There are studies that show that breeding two birds from different breeds together can cause hybrid vigor and the chick can outperform both parents. It's a great way to go.

The chick I'm talking about is a barred rock and jersey giant cross. Its 15 weeks and way bigger than my barred rock hen. They look identical almost except the head on the cross is white. It's a very pretty bird. I accidentally called it Ophelia which is the barred rock hens name and I was like... You're not Ophelia! It has grown so much the past 2 weeks since I've been sick. You blink your eyes and it seems they grow overnight!

 

[UThobbyfarmer]

Day 21. Here's what's hatched so far. 5 Isbar (4 blue, 1 splash), 2 Cream Legbar, 2 Marans, 2 Blue Laced Red Wyandotte, and 2 Double Silver Laced Barnvelder!

2 pips on the Barbezieux eggs. Unpipped but look good are 1 Isbar, 1 Barbezieux, 1 Silver Laced Orpington, 1 Swedish Flower.

I'm pretty confident the 2- 55 Flowery eggs are DIS even though I haven't pulled them yet. They were just too big. They didn't loose the right amount of moisture but there was no way to tinker with it because all other eggs were looking so good.

Here's some pics of the new chicks added to the ones from Wednesday. Also a pic of the Cream Legbars. It's my first time having these but I believe I have 1 male and 1 female? Or maybe 2 males? Confident they're not 2 females. Guessing based on the color and head spot.

 

[BuckeyeFoodie]

First baby is out! Second baby is unzipping as we speak and I'm having to sit on my hands to not just pop the top off the egg for it!

 

[abpatchy]

10 chicks hatched... one is sticking it's beak out of the shell. I wish I could open up and get them out...

 

[BuckeyeFoodie]

Second Aracauna/? baby hatched! Smells horribly of rotten egg though, which is a first for me...

 

[CluckNDoodle]

Second Aracauna/? baby hatched! Smells horribly of rotten egg though, which is a first for me...

A hatched chick smells??? Hmm, I would worry about the introduction of bacteria, omphalitis, when it absorbed the yolk sac if it's really coming from the chick and not another egg. Do you have chlorhexidine solution by any chance? I would definitely carefully clean the baby off and dab chlorhexidine on the navel once a day for a few days. Treating it much like a chick with a poorly closed navel just to be safe. I've never experienced this first hand though, so I'm not sure what else you could do.

 

[Mylied]

@SoftSilkie How're things going?

 

[PioneerChicks]

I'm trying to keep my eyes open hoping for an update. Everything going ok?

Oh my your little fighter was stuck for quite a while! Good luck, I hope everything goes well!

Sorry to keep you up and waiting for news, CluckNDoodle, but it was too late after I finished to check in.


(You might notice that I say "she" and "her" when I am talking about Valor. We actually have no idea of her gender, but we decided to hope for the best and therefore guessed she was female.)

As it turned out Valor was more tired than we thought. Piece by piece, we took of the whole top half (the air packet half) of the shell, membrane and all (didn't see a single blood vein in the membrane). Once again, thanks for the coconut oil tip, @LilyD, it made all the difference. The membrane near the zip was so dry that it was like a second layer of shell, and Valor was so dry that we put coconut oil on all exposed places to give she some moisture.

After the top was off Valor was still wiggling so we thought she would make it out by herself. We added a wet rag and a cup of water and, of course, Valor in his bottom shell. For five minutes we say on our hands while we watched before deciding he just needed a bit of time. We forced ourselves to leave the room.

10 minutes later (we had set a timer and everything) we were back. No progress. We took Valor out and angled the egg so it was angled down, helping her out. We chipped off a bit more of the shell and added more coconut oil and Valor "hatched"!

But there was one problem, her head appeared to be stuck under her wing. My helper panicked, saying "I can't do this!" This was probably the scariest part of the whole process. I comforted my helper, and we continues. With cue-tips I held the wing back and tried to push up the head so my helper could slide the cue-tip covered in coconut oil under, but the head was stuck. At this point I panicked and said stuff like, "she's not going to make it! She has a birth deformation that makes her head stick to her chest! We can't help her, we should 'put her down'!" My helper comforted me and said "it's just the membrane. This is a healthy chick, she is going to be okay." We tried again, and my helper was right, the membrane was sticking the head to the chest. With the help of the coconut oil we freed her head, but she still kept it curled down under her wing.

We put her in the incubator and left her for the night. I was literally shaking with relief that we didn't kill the chick. We watched a movie to calm our fears about the poor chick downstairs. By the time we finished it was 12:30 at night.

The next day I checked on Valor. Because she had been in the egg for so long I guessed that she was running out of the yolk in her stomach and I had it in my mind that if she was strong enough I would give her food and water. But now that she was half-dry I saw that my fears had been confirmed. The chick was too skinny and it's legs and neck were not thick enough to ever support any weight. The beak was too large for her head. I realized that Valor would never survive. We culled her this morning. I don't know what method was used because it wasn't me who did it.

Yes, I am sad. But I think it was better this way, because I wouldn't want Valor to live her whole life in pain.

Even if the assisted hatching didn't work I'm glad I got the experience. I know now that I should have acted sooner, so I will remember that for next time. Thank you everyone who helped make it possible for Valor to be able to stretch outside of the egg and enjoy freedom, if only for a few hours.

 

[FortCluck]

Sorry to keep you up and waiting for news, CluckNDoodle, but it was too late after I finished to check in.


(You might notice that I say "she" and "her" when I am talking about Valor. We actually have no idea of her gender, but we decided to hope for the best and therefore guessed she was female.)

As it turned out Valor was more tired than we thought. Piece by piece, we took of the whole top half (the air packet half) of the shell, membrane and all (didn't see a single blood vein in the membrane). Once again, thanks for the coconut oil tip, @LilyD, it made all the difference. The membrane near the zip was so dry that it was like a second layer of shell, and Valor was so dry that we put coconut oil on all exposed places to give she some moisture.

After the top was off Valor was still wiggling so we thought she would make it out by herself. We added a wet rag and a cup of water and, of course, Valor in his bottom shell. For five minutes we say on our hands while we watched before deciding he just needed a bit of time. We forced ourselves to leave the room.

10 minutes later (we had set a timer and everything) we were back. No progress. We took Valor out and angled the egg so it was angled down, helping her out. We chipped off a bit more of the shell and added more coconut oil and Valor "hatched"!

But there was one problem, her head appeared to be stuck under her wing. My helper panicked, saying "I can't do this!" This was probably the scariest part of the whole process. I comforted my helper, and we continues. With cue-tips I held the wing back and tried to push up the head so my helper could slide the cue-tip covered in coconut oil under, but the head was stuck. At this point I panicked and said stuff like, "she's not going to make it! She has a birth deformation that makes her head stick to her chest! We can't help her, we should 'put her down'!" My helper comforted me and said "it's just the membrane. This is a healthy chick, she is going to be okay." We tried again, and my helper was right, the membrane was sticking the head to the chest. With the help of the coconut oil we freed her head, but she still kept it curled down under her wing.

We put her in the incubator and left her for the night. I was literally shaking with relief that we didn't kill the chick. We watched a movie to calm our fears about the poor chick downstairs. By the time we finished it was 12:30 at night.

The next day I checked on Valor. Because she had been in the egg for so long I guessed that she was running out of the yolk in her stomach and I had it in my mind that if she was strong enough I would give her food and water. But now that she was half-dry I saw that my fears had been confirmed. The chick was too skinny and it's legs and neck were not thick enough to ever support any weight. The beak was too large for her head. I realized that Valor would never survive. We culled her this morning. I don't know what method was used because it wasn't me who did it.

Yes, I am sad. But I think it was better this way, because I wouldn't want Valor to live her whole life in pain.

Even if the assisted hatching didn't work I'm glad I got the experience. I know now that I should have acted sooner, so I will remember that for next time. Thank you everyone who helped make it possible for Valor to be able to stretch outside of the egg and enjoy freedom, if only for a few hours.

Reading what you said about how the chick looked, it wouldn't have mattered if you helped early. It seems that she wasn't fully formed or deformed in certain ways.

I'm sorry that you lost her, but know you did everything that you could