I would NEVER get angry with someone trying to help me! I went to your link. THANK YOU it is very helpful. In addition to reading your reply, I made a flurry of calls and reached the vet who contracts to Hubbard Farms here in NH. I think Hubbard is the company that breeds chickens for research on chicken genetics and so forth. Although this vet can not come to see my birds in person, ever, due to contractual obligations regarding infection risk, he was more than willingly to speak with me on the phone. He convinced me that the first year can be heartbreaking as there is such a learning curve. He told me that if I can work through this year, the next should be much more rewarding.
After telling my whole story to him and the person at Porter Turkeys (as written in the e-mail excerpt below), I have opened the other three of the original six eggs and found that there was that only single egg still 'going'. I wonder if by not bringing the eggs up to room temperature first from the fridge caused the delayed growth. I also firmly believe after looking at the membranes that lack of moisture was a serious problem. I have taken a picture of the now dead pullet but I can not seem to paste it into this post. Anyway, after you read my e-mail below, please tell me what you think I should do with the eleven eggs we 'found' in our pasture from our formerly non-broody girls.
This is my first year trying to breed turkeys. I find the Bourbon Reds wonderful! Besides the whole heritage taste and conservation angles, their curiosity and intelligence are a joy to experience for me and good for my neighboring flock of Golden Comet chickens. My egg laying flock of chickens have learned from the crew at Turkey Territory to look to the sky for threats. Hawks and Turkey vultures now know our address here in NH.
But to get back on track, four of my seven ladies REALLY tried to brood their own but after almost two months with smashed, smelly eggs, only two pullets made it to a recognizable state before they appear to have simply died in the shell. I found one egg discarded as far away from the group nest as she could get with a small leg sticking out of the shell. After this incident we candled all the eggs and found that none of these girls had anything going on under them. Throughout the two months of their brooding clutches of eggs, we had found eaten eggs or empty shells outside their group nest. Since we had excluded the tom for almost the entire two months, these final barren eggs made sense. Given the eggs infertile state, we destroyed the remaining eggs and had these girls rejoin the group.
About two weeks before the leg egg incident, we purchased a still-air Little Giant incubator. I held a lengthy discussion with the owner of the local feed store where I purchase my supplies. The owner has been raising birds (chickens, turkeys, ducks, game birds) naturally and via incubator for well over 20 years. I also read everything I could find. The owner said I should turn my fridge up to 40 degrees and collect eggs from the fertile, non-broody girls for no more than a week. I did that and gathered 10 eggs that began incubating on June 5. Although I did purchase an egg turner at about eight days into this project, June 14, in the beginning I was only turning the eggs once every twelve hours. I obviously missed the really important part in all my reading because every web site I now browse states clearly that I must turn turkey eggs 3 5 times a day! The feed store owner however told me that before automation he turned ALL his bird eggs every 12 hours.
Well Mother Nature loves a good twist! Wouldnt you know it BUT while some time just before or immediately after we started incubating, one the three non-broody girls had gone and built a nice little nest out in the pasture and collected ELEVEN of her and the other two non-broody girls eggs. My husband found all the eggs with her on top of them the first night she did not come in with the rest of the group (she, the other two non-broodies and the tom). Since the nest was so close to the electric net fence and predators are a real problem here, we could not leave her on the nest and thus promptly put these new eggs into the incubator, about one week after the first group on June 12!
So
I have been candling all these eggs at least every Saturday since this project began. Of the original 10 eggs from the June 5 group, four eggs have been removed during weeks 2 and 3. I have seen blood vessels and growing birds in all the remaining six from the June 5 bunch. I took the egg turner out on Wednesday June 30. These June 5 eggs are now completely dark with a large air cell on the large end of the egg. I see and hear nothing from this bunch.
The June 12-ish group all has had blood vessel development and growing birds BUT they all appear to be a various stages of development as of last night July 4, 2010. I have been turning them since removal of the automated turner. I realize I am but a simply human trying to grow birds from eggs BUT this apparent failure is very disheartening. I hope you can shed some light on what went wrong from either a hen perspective or a human perspective.[/i]
