Two weeks old!

jina and Goose

4.21.2016

I know i promised gardening photos in my last post, but the lovely Spring days here on the farm has allowed for some wonderful outings for the chicks.

We have a total of eight! Momma hen June, is doing an excellent job raising them. When they get time out in the yard, June teaches the chicks everything about scratching the grass to get to the dirt!

The last chick to hatch was 2 days after the previous. When I candled everything seemed A-OK but during hatch a different story emerged. Last Thursday (today is the following Thursday) I heard the chick faintly peeping. I was relieved to finally have my last one coming! At this point of 2 weeks after the first hatchling i was ready to put away the the incubator (if you are following the blog you know there were several eggs that I had separated from under momma because of the poop on them. This occurred prior to me giving momma June her own coop to hatch in peace from the other fowl. Now i know to move her earlier. So the messy eggs I had to clean and isolate them. In the end, I had 3 'bad' eggs which were developed chicks but died of an obvious bacterial infection, and oh my goodness were the eggs stinky, no need to candle or crack em open!!!! yuck!, and the rest were a successful hatch. I actually buried them because of the stink.)

Well come the next day, on Friday evening, the sound of the peeping was more intense. I checked and made sure the humidity was good, that she was on a dry paper towel, etc etc. I thought we were ready to go. Well, come Saturday morning and fully expecting the chick to be out I was surprised she was not. And when i peered in to study the egg, I quickly found out why she had not yet hatched. She was upside down and trying to hatch out of the narrow end of the egg! Luckily she was strong and she had cracked a weird round area off. The chicken uses its beak under its tiny right wing to guide it in a circumnavigational pattern to hatch off the blunt end. When the chicks hatch on the short pointy end, they can not turn because there is no room or leverage for them to spin in a circle. And even worse, most chicks die from hatching on the short end because the air sac is usually on the blunt end as well.

Well I scooped her up, walked her to the bathroom and ran my hot water. I adjusted so temp it felt just perfect and let the water pool into the palm of my hand. I slowly pulled the membrane back to open the already cracked area. Well, its all she needed, she popped that shell right off onto my hand. She also stayed seated in the shell! So, I did a quick check that the yolk was fully absorbed, that there was no blood either, I supported her and I quick snapped this beautiful photo.

 

              Last But Not Least

She sure looked happy to be finally out! I don’t blame her!

June and the Eights

I hope everyone is enjoying the early spring. We sure are.

4/9/16 Five chicks and a hen.

Did you say snow? Pretty late season snow came today. Still flurrying as i type. So I seized the moment and went out and took some photographs of the yard. Sure was pretty!

The backyard: a view from the coop.

You can easily guess the age of the chicks by how Yellow their down is. They are born very yellow and loose that colouration within a week. So, from the photograph concerning the two chicks directly in front: The front left is 9 days old. The front right is 4 days old.

backyard beauty! with the temps hovering around 33 degrees, the snow fell very wet and clung to all the branches. Sure did make for an epic photo!

This is my road out front. Sometimes during bad weather I can not even leave my driveway!

I hope you enjoyed my pretty photos! Next up... Gardening!


SpotOnFarm

3/31/16 June's first hatch

What a lovely surprise! I moved June three nights ago to this hutch so that she could be alone to brood. Her coop mates were stressing her out so much and kept laying eggs into her nest. This lead to some dirty pile ups and 14 eggs under her. I currently have 5 of the dirtiest eggs in a brooder in my house. And left 9 under her. Not sure if the dirty 5 will make it, but i wiped the eggs best I could with warm water. For June I now use tiny containers for water and food. I have placed them nearby on a ledge. I made sure she was off layer feed and back onto regular food. I was definitely very nervous to move her since I knew the due dates started tomorrow, and ran till the 7th of April. Moving her at night seemed to be a good trick and she laid right back down on the nest.

Here is June looking all happy! She is no longer as pale as she was last week.

 The best news is, we already have 2 chicks. Here you can see a very healthy one peeping out from his mom. I bugged her three times, and so now ill give her another day till i check under her again. :)

Spring is definitely here! What loveliness to bear witness too. I enjoy having a broody hen far more than an incubator.

Happy Spring! 

Orusts in the snow.

What incredible camouflage! Some nights these birds do not go in to roost, and it takes putting on the flood lights and using a headlamp to find them. Here they are in broad daylight in the bush looking very much so like mottled leaves against the snow!

Here is a pic of them sunbathing best they can!

Enjoy! And we will post soon again! 

Incubating 101

day 13

So the eggs have been growing wonderfully. I have 5 Orust and 3 Welsummer. I removed all the eggs that did not fertilized of the Orust but as for the Welsummer I am having a hard time peering through their thick shells. Now that the embryos are over 7 days of growth, I can definitely tell 2 of the 3 are fertilized. So that leaves the last egg. It is so very dark the light does not shine through!! Ugh! So how long do i let it incubate till i remove it? I do not want to risk contaminating the other eggs by waiting to long. But I may see a hint of life... Tonight right before i sat down to blog, I candled and I think i spotted 5 distinct veins. ohhh wouldn’t that be great to have 3 baby Welsummers! So as for the ratio... All have survived thus far. so for sure 7/7 (if the dark eggs turns out to be fertilized and not just a trick of the eyes that will make it 8/8) So, I am hoping to have a 100% hatch rate come October! I keep the temp between 99 and 100 and humidity likes to be between 35-45. I do add water which boosts it up to about 50. All the articles I have been reading suggest that the last three days should have humidity closer to 60. This incubator seems not to want to hold it that high during my trial runs.

So why the need for high humidity? Well according Brinsea a company that makes incubators, (http://www.brinsea.com/Articles/Advice/Humidity.aspx) they claim the chicks need to loose 13 to 15% of their weight, but to much water loss or excessive humidity is a problem during hatching. The site claims that higher humidity towards the last several days of incubating allows the chicks pourus egg to accept water because the chick has a need to replace the water lost during growth during the first 18 days of incubation. If your humidity runs to high during the entire process it is warned the chicks will be to Large, and hatching difficult because for the chick there is no room to get leverage to hatch out. If the humidity is to low the chicks may be underdeveloped, the air space to large and the chick to weak to hatch at all. Either scenario would be awful!

As always I do not make anything easy for myself. I actually, not believe the facts that fertilized eggs can be stored up to two week ( but have decreasing hatching rates as the time lapses) and be incubated all together. I did not believe it! So i started to incubate my first two Orust starting the 12th which puts me at a due date of the 3/4 of October. The remaining eggs were collected several days later on the 17. This hatch date will be the 8/9. There are 3 Orust and 2(maybe 3) Welsummers for that date.   So what will i do to increase humidity for the 3, but then not 'drown' the other 5 who are just under a week away from their high humidity need? This sure is the question and I know with attention to detail, nurturing and lots and lots of research...Everything will work out.

 My favourite site for all things chicken is  http://www.backyardchickens.com/f/5/incubating-hatching-eggs There is a plethora of information from the users who post here! I am quite amazed at every story and bit of advice given out to newbies like myself!

I hope everyone’s Autumn is just as beautiful as it has been here!
Enjoy!