Chicken development......

Just in case you are wondering what is going on inside of the eggs that Daisy is sitting on, here is a little pictorial. It is a little bit graphic. But, I think it is really amazing!!

I can't wait to see our little babies! Keep on growing. 

In other news,  I can wear shoes!! Hooray!! My foot is still broken, but is healing like it is supposed to. It is amazing how good wearing shoes can feel. I am off to enjoy a bit of summertime!
 

Eggciting News!!

We have some eggciting news around here! We are going to have grandchickens! "But Kara, you don't have roosters. How are you having grandchickens?", you ask. I know, I know. I will tell you our story. Before I broke my foot Daisy had starting sitting in a nest box a lot. She started out just sleeping there, which is odd. The girls usually sleep on a roost. She slowly started spending more and more time sitting in a nest box on a little lonely egg of her own or borrowing an egg that someone else laid. We would always gather the eggs so that she didn't have anything to sit on, but she insisted on staying in a nest box. Thus, we had a broody chicken. You call them broody when they start behaving like this, wanting to have chicken babies and sitting on a nest.

We tried to deter her. I put ice packs under her to start with. When going broody a hen raises her body temperature to incubate the eggs. So I essentially was trying to cool her down. She didn't take notice. Then I broke my foot. Edith took that as her clue to start sitting in the nest box too. Two broody hens? No way. Dave locked them out of their nesting area so that they couldn't get to a nest box. The two hens didn't want to give it up!! They waited for the door to be opened. Edith eventually gave, but Daisy started making a nest on the ground. We opened the door and she took back to the nest.

Once I was able to walk I started thinking that we needed to do something for our insistent momma. She didn't know that her eggs wouldn't make babies since there was no rooster to fertilize them. I talked to my relative James that I help out at the Marietta Square Farmer's Market. He has chickens. Many more than I do. I asked him if he could provide me with fertilized eggs and sure enough he did.

Here are the fertilized eggs in the nest. I marked them with pencil. Some other chickens like to lay eggs in the nest with each other. I needed to be able to tell them apart.  Dave placed the eggs on Tuesday night this last week. So, we should have baby chickens on August 10th or 11th!

Here is Daisy all fluffed up trying to distract me from her nest. 

And here she is all fluffed up on the nest. She fluffs up to make herself look bigger and distract you from her nest. She also squeals at you. It is kind of funny. Some chickens get really mean while they are on a nest. Daisy still lets me reach under her, although she squeals at me and fluffs up like this. I think she ultimately knows that I am not going to hurt her or her nest. 

I candled some eggs last night. This is when you look at an egg in the dark with a very bright small light to to see inside the egg. There are babies growing!! Good job Daisy.

Our eggs look something like this right now when candled. You can see the veins. The small red blob is the embryo! I will try to find more photos to post and will keep you updated! The time is going to fly by!

Happy Clucking Birthday!!

Happy Birthday Girls!!

I can hardly believe that my girls are a year old! It seems like yesterday they were just eggs. What an adventure they have taken us on and oh, how we love them! We hatched Atta Girl, Daisy, Edith and Jemima. They are such lovely ladies. Live it up today girls. It's all yours.

 

Ode to Wuella

Thank you everyone for your encouragement, support and mourning with me. I had to take a bit before I could write more. Here she is. She was so cute and sweet.

She moved when I took this one.

I knew that she was struggling today because her neck was weak and she wasn't tweeting. I went in to give her her second meal of the day and she had passed away. All of the rest of the girls were quiet. I cried. I called Dave and left him a message at school. I took her out, of course. We will bury her and Lil' Runt together. Our first chick that hatched and our last chick that hatched. I am thankful for the experience. I learned so much! Many thanks to Andrew for helping me learn how to care for her. We celebrated his victory on Roswell today. Check it out here. It was great to be around chicken loving people after losing one. I will always remember our first chick. She holds a very special place our hearts.

The rest of the chicks are growing and starting to show their personalities. Loud, bossy, quick, quiet. Their wing feathers are coming in. They are so stinking cute. We have to start handling them more. We spent so much time taking care of Wuella that the rest of the girls didn't get a whole lot of attention. That is changing! This weekend I plan to take individual pictures and give them their proper names. 

If you want to come see the chicks, Tuesday looks good. Let me know. They will start looking funny in a couple of weeks as they start growing all of their feathers in and hit that unavoidable awkward stage. 

I am tired after a long day. We have a busy day ahead tomorrow. I will post more soon. stay tuned...

So cute!

All of the chicks are so cute! I have to get a good picture to post. Hopefully this afternoon I will. 

I have been watching over those chicks so closely that it is weird to be at work today! Last night was sad. We lost a another one. She was the last hatch so far. She was tiny and we called her Lil' Runt. She must have hatched before she was ready and used up all of her energy running around. We loved you Lil' Runt. I had big hopes for you. Now you can run around in chicky heaven.

Wuella is hanging in there. She is one tough chick! We started force feeding her yesterday. She seems to take it well. I fed her before coming to work today and will go home to feed her again at lunch. She amazes me. As long as she doesn't give up, we won't give up on her. She pulls her legs under her now and can walk a little better. It takes a whole lot of effort though. We are rooting for you little Wuella.

I'll have to get some video of the other chicks running around and eating and drinking. They are so cute! It is amazing the instinct that they have to do all of that. I am so glad for this experience. 

I will say that Wuella is teaching me a lesson. I need to get myself back into the Word of God. I have been slacking. If I don't feed myself, I will not be sustained. We all have issues that keep us from doing this, be it "tired legs", busyness, sickness. Wuella is reminding me of this. If I didn't feed her right now, she wouldn't have a chance. Thank you God for sustaining me and feeding me. Thank you for giving me a chance. I love you Wuella. Hand in there chicky girl. I'll be home to feed you soon! Thank you God for allowing me to take care of Wuella.

Thanks to all for reading and for praying. Keep praying for Wuella! I still have 5 eggs in the incubator. We'll give them one more day to see if they hatch. 

Stay tuned...

We've lost one

I am not sure which one, thankfully not Wuella. I am attached to her now, rooting for her like crazy! I took a peek into the incubator through the window and saw a couple of chicks piled on top of another one. I knew it was gone. She could have been trampled, or just might not have made it. Anyway, surely she is in chicken heaven , where the grass is green and having a good time. We gently and quickly removed her. Dave buried her in a special spot. Hopefully that is the only one that will go down. I guess the sad comes with the joy too. It is still worth it to see all of theses happy little peeps. I think that we will move them to the brooder tonight. I can't take them being in there tomorrow while I am at work. Granted, one could get trampled in there just as easily. God protect my chicky babies!

Stay tuned...

Bock Bocks Everywhere!

Okay, so they aren't everywhere. But currently so many in the incubator that I can't count them through the fogged up windows. The first five are Wuella, Xena, Trace, Atta Girl, and Edith. I lost count and names there after. There are at least 10 counting Wuella.They hatched all day yesterday and all night last night. I was one tired mama hen!

I can't get a picture. The windows are fogged clear over. Believe me, I wish that I could get some. I want to see the little buggers!

Keep praying for our first, Wuella. She is still hanging in there. Her legs haven't corrected yet. I keep telling her that it is okay to have braces because her mommy, myself, did when I was a little baby. She has drank a bit and I think that she ate some accidentally. She doesn't seem to have the energy to peck at food. I want her to make it, so I have been rotating chicks from the incubator into the brooder with her to keep her company(no baby likes to be alone) and to show her how to drink and peck. It is about time to put another one in and switch the current one out. It becomes apparent how little she is and how strong they are after a while. She must take after her namesake Manuel.He is a persistent guy. I couldn't name her Manuel, so Wuella it was. Wuella is tough and hanging in there. I am not going to force feed her. She has to learn to peck.

The others should come out of the incubator in a day or two. I want Wuella to be strong so that she doesn't get trampled on. I might have to make a partition in the incubator for her. We'll see. The constant peeping and raucous sounds that come from the incubator are cute, funny, calming and exciting all at the same time. I can't wait to take them out! 

Stay tuned....

Number Two and Three

Owen stopped by today to Meet Wuella. He enjoyed hearing her peep and try to walk around.

Here is little Wuella all fluffy in the brooder. She is still struggling to walk. She hasn't drank or eaten very much either. We changed her splint from a band-aid to a pipe cleaner. It is more sturdy. If you are the praying type, please pray that she will start walking upright and eating and drinking. She peeps SO loud. I am so glad that she is all fluffy now. Now meet little Wuella.

While Owen was visiting we had a surprise appearance. I had been hearing some chirping and saw a few little beak holes through the incubator windows. We were all checking intermittently. I went in to take a look and there was a chick! Owen named her. We had a couple of suggestions of course. Out of them he chose Xena. We thought it fitting as she just seemed to pop out! Here she is through the window in the incubator. World, meet Xena! She is a blue laced red wyandotte. You can tell that her feathers and beak are lighter that Wuella's.

Shortly after Xena arrived number 3 hatched. Here they both are. It is a little fuzzy but you can see her. She is a blue cuckoo maran. I haven't picked a name for her yet.

Number four is trying to hatch and Xena and number 3 are huddled around her. I am calling them all girls for now. I can only hope! Many others are rolling around and starting to hatch. It is all so exciting. I am getting worn out! We still have a ways to go.

Here is Lleulu checking out Wuella. She is curious about the chicks, but doesn't seem to be hunting them. She has been curled up near the incubator and checking the peeping sounds out. Maybe she will be a good mother hen. 

I will keep you posted as the hatching continues. What a great Memorial Day weekend! Stay tuned...

And the Hatching Begins!

Our first egg started hatching at school on Thursday. We were thrilled to see this little crack in the shell upon arriving at school.

It took the chick a whole day to get to this point, broken half way around the shell. A couple of things to point out. First, we wrote on the shell in marker. Bad idea. The shell is porous and it could have poisoned the chick. Thankfully, it didn't seem to bother this one. Write in pencil on a shell if you have to.  Second, I am not sure what I think about this little incubator. You can't control the temperature or humidity. The humidity is essential to their hatching. I think that this guy was suffering from low humidity.

At the end of the day on Friday we moved the entire incubator holding two unhatched eggs and one hatching egg to my house, their new home. I placed them in my big incubator to join their new brothers and sisters. 

When the chick still hadn't hatched I got worried. It had been many hours, over a a full day. I was afraid of it drying out and running out of energy. Thankfully I heard from a fellow chicken lover and experienced keeper of chickens. He told me that it was time to help it break free. I set up my chicken operating room and got busy. I had to carefully moisten the inside of the shell. Then I had to break away the shell, going around in a circle, just like the chick would have. Here is Dave inspecting the chick and my work.

Here is a close up of the chick still curled up inside. It was the first time that it saw me. "Are you my mother?" This baby chick is a black austrolorp. That is why it has a dark beak and feathers. Many actually hatch dark and grow light feathers later on.

Lleulu was watching the whole time. She didn't seem to mind what was going on.

Finally it came out of the shell. The poor thing was stuck to the membrane. 

I spent the next while slowly moistening and picking off bits of membrane and shell.

I think that I was picking off some shell here. The little peep was exhausted!

Here she is! Still wet, but ready to go. I put her back into the incubator to dry off and peep a lot. Hopefully she will get the other eggs hatching. 

She ended up with the name Wuella, after a student at school that was so thrilled about a baby chick hatching! Now she is dried off and in the brooder. I have to get a photo of her all fluffy. She has been peeping loudly, apparently to a peeping chick inside of a shell, inside of the incubator! We should have more hatching soon. I keep checking and no shells are broken yet.

Little Wuella has another hurdle to cross. She has splayed legs or spraddled legs. This is when a chicken looks like it is doing a split. She wasn't that bad, but couldn't stand on her own and walked like a drunkchicken, like I have ever seen a drunk chicken. We found this web site, followed the instructions and are awaiting the results. She already can sit up better. She should be standing tomorrow! Poor little Wuella. What a tough beginning to life! You'll have some siblings soon enough. Hang in there. 

I will have more to report soon. Stay tuned.... 

One down

Upon candling my eggs for the last time I discovered one that I had either misread or missed. It definitely didn't have a baby chick growing. We are down to 17 eggs now. I couldn't see much this time. The eggs are mostly dark, but the air pockets look good. I hope this is a good indication! I could only see a little chick in one or two eggs, the others were too dark. It still amazes me to see those tiny beings moving around and blood vessels pumping inside of an egg!

Oh, I just looked out the window to see a Cardinal feeding it's baby. I knew that I had heard tiny peeps lately. Oh, maybe it was feeding it's mate! Is love in the air? Either way, I love spring time! Soon I will be watching my little chicks eat up. Can't wait. I do hope that they hatch!

Stay tuned... 

The Meetup

The Atlanta Pet Chicken Owners meetup was great! I love meeting fellow chicken lovers and owners. Everyone was so encouraging and helpful. I can't wait to have chickens out of their shells to talk about. 

A meeting is going to be scheduled near Marietta/Smyrna for next month. You know that you want to come meet some chicken loving folks. I am hooked. For sure. I know, you knew that already. I can't stop learning about chickens and talking about them.

I might buy an incubator to rent out to classrooms and home schoolers. Please let me know if you or anyone you know would be interested. I am trying to put out feelers to see if it would be worth it. I think it would be. The miracle of life is amazing to behold.

Yes. Yes, indeed. I will be a proud mama hen. 

Stay tuned....

Egg Update

Isn't that a cool luna moth? I snapped a picture of it on the chicken coop tour.

We are approaching the final countdown. Well, almost. The eggs have one more week to go. The time is flying by. The eggs are looking good. Hopefully I was right in my candling efforts. Today the chicks growing inside of the eggs can hear, have eyelids and are growing feathers. They will spend the next few days growing rapidly!

I have been spending some time reading up on egg development and raising chicks. The public library has been a great resource. I have learned so much, but I know that I still have a long way to go. I am currently reading Living With Chickens. It has some great photos in it and is a quite enjoyable read. I definitely recommend it.

Hopefully tonight I will make it to the local Atlanta Pet Chicken Meetup Group.  I am sure that the people attending will have plenty of info to share with me on how to have a successful hatch and how to care for the new chicks once they do hatch. Getting anxious!

Stay tuned...     

Candling Update

I candled the eggs again last night. This time I had read up and knew what I was looking for. I could see much better this time, even on the darker shells. I think that there was only one dark thick shell that I could not decipher anything about. 

I got a big surprise.... eighteen eggs have growing chicks inside! I was pretty impressed. For my first hatching that is a great rate. There is a chance that I some could be "quitters". That means they stop growing and die. I hope that they all make it! I have at least one of every variety still going! I am so excited.

It really is amazing to get a view into an egg. To see a tiny being moving around and knowing that it had grown so much in just a few days time is a miracle. God made some truly unfathomable things and I am blessed to witness these little ones. You can see a space of air on one end of the egg, the chick, amniotic sac, and yolk in the middle, and a bit of fluid on the other end. So cool! The baby chick absorbs the yolk before hatching. This gives it the nutrients that it needs to break out of its shell and to survive for the next two days. Amazing! Today my chicks can hear, have eyelids and are growing feathers!

I can check them one more time before they hatch. Maybe this weekend. Then the countdown begins! I actually dreamed about eggs last night and candling them. It is amazing to sit there and witness life in the making. I guess they are getting to me.

Stay tuned! More is happening every day! 

Egg Candling

Sunday night I tried my hand at egg candling. This allows you to tell if the embryos are developing. Here is a website that gives some information on the process. Here are pictures on the same site, backyardchickens.com. It is a bit tricky, especially with the dark shelled eggs. I used an LED head lamp held with my hand cupped around it and sat the egg on top of my hand. The white shelled eggs were easy to read. The almond eggs were ok. The dark and speckled ones, I have no idea about! If I am correct, around 25% of my eggs are developing. That would be about 10 eggs. It is a bit disappointing, but a bit of a relief too. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with 40 chicks if they all hatched! 

I am going to try to candle the eggs again later in the week, somewhere around day 10 of development. Hopefully I will know what I am looking for and be able to tell more on the dark shelled eggs. They should be a little more developed too. It is neat to see a tiny embryo moving! 

I am also trying to get the incubator settled in after placing the automatic egg turner in it. The temp reading are varying. The egg turner is a relief! I am not quite as stressed out over the eggs. 

This is all exciting and definitely a learning experience. Oh, I also learned that the egg and sperm are combined in the egg before incubation. It just kind of sits there and waits until the hen sits on the eggs to start development. Eggs are pretty amazing!

Stay tuned! I'll do my best to keep you updated.

The Incubator

Here is the incubator that I am using. It is a Hova-Bator. This model is fairly old. The newer ones look kind of like space capsules and most have a bigger viewing window.

I forgot to take a picture of the eggs before I put in the automatic turner. So here are the eggs in the automatic turner inside of the incubator. I love all of the colors! To the side is my hygrometer. The egg turner makes a full rotation in four hours. It is quiet and slow. It was so strange to wake up this morning and not have to turn the eggs! I didn't know that I would miss that ritual so quickly!

The countdown is on! Only two weeks until baby chicks should be hatching! 

Incubation...

I am learning a lot about my eggs! First, I don't mind turning them. I thought that I would, but it makes me check on them. I am borrowing an automatic egg turner for the rest of the incubation. It will definitely make things easier. Think of it! Three turns a day, times forty eggs, times 18 days. That is a lot of turns! The automatic egg turner turns them more frequently. Also, it takes 21 days to hatch but you don't turn them the last 3 days. 

I have had a problem getting my temperatures right too. The incubator is supposed to be 99 degrees. It seemed to be hovering around 97 on my standard thermometers. Then I got a hygrometer. It measures humidity and temperature. Humidity is important during incubation and hatching. The hygrometer measured temps at 95. I finally got them to go up to 97. Today I will try to raise it to 99, before I put the automatic egg turner in place. Whew! I have been stressing like a mother hen! I still have to get the humidity right. It is a little high. It should be 40-50% during incubation and 100% during hatch time. 

I have so much to learn! I will take some pictures of the incubator with and without the egg turner so that you get a good idea. I can't believe that it has almost been one week. The time is flying. I will have baby chicks in no time!

Stay tuned....

This really happened by accident...

On my chicken adventure, I truly thought that I would get some day old chicks to get my small flock started. They are so cute and fluffy! I pictured opening the box when they arrived and them chirping out, " Are you my Mother?" just like in the Dr. Seuss book.

My plans changed quickly on Friday. A teacher at school had borrowed a small incubator to hatch some eggs in her classroom. She asked me to help and we anxiously awaited our shipment of eggs. They finally arrived at lunch time and when we opened the box there were 4 eggs instead of 3. Oh no! Our classroom incubator only holds 3 eggs! What would we do with a 4th egg? I quickly decided that I would try to incubate it. 

First I hatched a plan for a basic incubator consisting of a light bulb and a box. Driving home from work with my little egg in the seat next to me, I remembered that my uncle had an incubator. He had just hatched ducklings. Whew. Now I knew that I had an incubator, but was it worth it to hatch just one egg? I contacted Little Gem Hatchery. I had been in contact with them about picking up some day old chicks. They are just a 40 minute drive away. I decided to see if they had any hatching eggs. 

I got a response back very quickly! Ginny and Lee told me that they had a lot of hatching eggs ready and waiting. Could I pick them up on Sunday? Woohoo!!! I was all set. I followed the instructions that they gave me for my one lonely egg and waited anxiously. Sunday morning Dave and I drove out to the hatchery. We saw all kinds of chickens and roosters, guineas, ducks, geese and a turkey! Ginny had already filled up two egg cartons for us filled with different kind of eggs. After our tour and some advice, I paid for our eggs and headed home.

Here is what we got!
 

I really wanted to hatch Cuckoo Marans. They are pretty birds and lay pretty eggs. Yes, I judge a chicken by it's looks and eggs. Actually, I was looking for 3 things when I was looking at chicks and it applies to getting hatching eggs, too. First was what a chicken looks like. Like any pet, you want to enjoy looking at it every day. There are so many varieties! I looked for hours online. The second factor was egg production and looks. I want a decent amount of eggs and pretty eggs. I love speckled eggs, brown eggs, almond eggs. Ok, I love any eggs. The third thing I looked for was the chicken's disposition. I wanted a docile chicken that did not tend to go broody. That means that she gets moody and wants to sit on her eggs all of the time. Little Gem Hatchery has chickens that fit my bill! 

Ok, our varieties and total.

3  Blue Laced Red Wyandotte

3  Blue Cuckoo Maran

3  Welsummer

6  Blue splash Maran

6  Lakenvelder

6  Golden Lakenvelder

12 Cuckoo Maran

1 Black Australorp(form the classroom shipment)

Whew! Let's look at them again.

After they go into the incubator it will take 21 days for them to hatch. That gives us an expected arrival date of May 24th. I have to turn them 3 times a day so that the embryos do not stick to their shells. We don't have a fancy automatic egg turner. The eggs are not viable until they are in the incubator. I mean, they aren't embryos until then, just egg and sperm hanging out separately. Interesting huh? I hope that all of the eggs hatch. If I do my job, we should have success. Some never develop and that can't be helped. This will be an adventure!

40 baby chicks! I will have to sell some to good homes and the hatchery said that they would take back any we can't handle or any roosters. You can't always distinguish a boy from a girl chick for 3-6 months. It depends on the variety of chicken. We only want girls so that they can lay eggs. You don't need a rooster to have eggs. 

I think I will start sharing some things that I learned from my class on here. What do you guys think? It was so informative! They really are not difficult to care for. They take work just like any pet. 

I will keep you all updated on the incubating process and on our coop building process.

Thinking about having chickens in your backyard? Maybe I can help! I am going to have some chicks soon and I know a really handy carpenter who can build your coop. =)