Tom's latest victim

That Turkey must DIE!

Ok, I have no hard forensics to back this up but I have seen Tom grab my chicken girls by the neck and yesterday Queenie was found bloody in the chicken coop with her comb not only damaged but partially torn off.  We brought her inside and have her in a cage giving her lots of treats so she can heal.  I was going to give her a day or so before trying to wash the blood out of her feathers.  Don't want to tramatize her any more then necessary at this point.

Here are my attempts to get some photos:

Queenie, turn around please

Queenie, look up please, stop moving

Please baby hold still

Good girl.

As you can (kinda) see the back portion of the comb is torn loose and there is lots of dried blood all over her pretty white head and down her neck.  She is usually totally white except for her bright red comb and waddles. 

Just going to spoil her to get the chance to heal because if chickens see red they will peck at the area and keep re-injuring her even to the point of killing her.  She still gave me an egg this morning though.  She has been one heck of an egg layer and I hope this hasn't caused her too much stress.  We definitely need to get more white egg layers in the flock.

Final count

So I had the wrong start count, I kept saying we started with 25 eggs but we actually had 30 eggs.  We now have 23 chicks, one chick passed away yesterday.  He was born with deformed feet and was unable to walk.  We broke rule #1 and helped him get out of the shell then kept him as comfortable as we could putting water and food next to him, making sure he was protected from the others and at the perfect temperature.  He fell asleep and didn't wake up.

We also had 6 eggs that did not hatch, we couldn't help ourselves we had to take a look and 2 eggs either were not fertilized or for some reason didn't develop at all.  4 were at various stages of development but were dead. 

We loaded the incubator with 48 new eggs and have the chicks moved to a larger home.  Tried to do another video, unfortunately you can hear the TV in the background better then the chicks chatting.  They were more interested in what I was doing though then showing off their vocal abilities.

This little brown guy is nosey and needs to know what is going on at all times!  When I look into the box he is the first one to stand up and see what I need.  Therefore he also gets lots of mommy kisses...

This is as many as I could get in one photo.  they are always on the move and no one will smile for the camera...

And here are a few other photos showing some of the babies...

 

The one exiting photo right here is a scratcher.  She really can dig down looking for bugs!

These guys are hanging out under the red heat lamp so the photo color is a little strange.  All the light colored ones are light yellow.

21 more days and we should have more chicks.  Hopefully Shane will get a new chicken coop built before I go nuts with this many chicks in the house.  At least we should have one chicken dinner a week taken care of!  I would like to raise a couple to laying age and see what the eggs look like.  Not 100% sure about Little Roo and if we see the color of eggs one of the white babies lay we will have an idea what genes Roo has.

Oh and the end of February I am getting some pure chicks from the feed store and I have hopes of getting a pure rooster (fingers crossed for an Americana which lays green eggs).  We are up to 9 or so eggs a day again although some days we have been getting as many as 12.  Queenie is giving an egg a day so she is a good one to breed for raising to be new laying hens.

18 chicks

I think all that are going to hatch have hatched.  A total of 18 little chicks out of the 25 eggs we started with.  Not bad for our first attempt, just over 70%.  Sites I have looked at vary in hatch rate, the best being about 80%.

so here are the babies...

A few more hatched after this photo but they pretty much look just like the rest of these.  right in the middle is Amy the only Americana egg that hatched...she is light brown with dark brown stripes on her back.

Once the incubator is cleaned out Shane wants to start another batch.  I am trying to talk him out of that.  Not sure how we are going to keep multiple batches of babies alive around Romeo.  As it is, I have to take Romeo with me when I leave to go to town to be sure he has no chance of hurting the babies!!!

The 18 chicks will grow fast so I need to get a larger box ready for them.  Oh see the yellow chick with the 1 black spot?  That is one of Queenies 2 babies, our leghorn who lays the white eggs.  Both her chicks are all yellow except one little black spot on their back. 

This was very exciting for all of us and I just hope when the time comes to butcher that things go smoother then with the rabbits.

Ok, it really was fun even though neither boy looks very excited.  Like always it is hard to keep the boys from bugging the little babies.  At least all our animals are well loved!

8 so far

We have 8 of the cutest little chickens!  I am hoping to open the incubator tonight and get the little guys out.  I have everything ready.  We are all so excited, it is hard to get pics inside the incubator but as soon as we get them out I will post a bunch of them!  They are little mutts.  Since we don't know what mix Little Roo is and not sure which chick is coming out of which egg and some of the chickens lay eggs that are hard to tell apart none of them will probably look too much like any of our girls either.  We had 1 white egg hatch so far (Queenie is the only one who lays white eggs and she is a Leghorn).  None of the green eggs have hatched.  Maybe next time.  We are very excited to try hatching more eggs!  The mixed breeds we raise are going to be for meat when they grow up.

baby chick cheeps

So we put our ears next to the incubator and we heard baby chick cheeps!  I used a flash light to look in at the eggs and 3 have little cracks or holes in them!  One was actually rocking from side to side as the little guy was working his way out.  I don't know if I can wait!!!  All 3 eggs that appear to be hatching are brown.  Keep your fingers crossed that tomorrow we will have pics of the new babies!

squint and tilt your head

See the red lines inside the egg?  These are blood vessels during the first days after putting the eggs into the incubator.  They are hard to see especially with the darker or thicker egg shells.

As a comparison this is a candling of an egg that appears to have either not been fertilized or for some reason did not develop once put into the incubator.  This is also a lighter colored shell then the first image.

And this is a baby chick about 3 days later. Isn't he cute?

Now I am going to attach a video and hopefully it will work.  I find it VERY exciting!  We are talking on the video so be warned if you don't want anyone around you to hear what is going on.

At the very end you can see the darker circle that is his eye moving close to the shell.

I got so excited the first time we saw the babies moving around I almost dropped the egg.  I sure hope some of them make it to hatching...

This has become quite the family project as you can tell everyone is front and center when it is time to check on the babies.

There are some eggs that have not developed and there are some that have a blood ring that happens when the embryo dies early in development and the egg looks like the 2nd image except you see a red line running around the center of the egg.

stormy night

So just as the boys and I were heading to bed last night...total darkness.  Everyone fumbled their way to the living room and I started lighting candles and finding emergency candles and flashlights.  Shane went into MacGyver mode to keep the incubator going so our baby chicks would be ok.  He found a power inverter that we had for camping and the battery from our trolling motor had just been charged up and they were enough to keep things going.   I was so stressed, we were worried that the battery wouldn't hold out so we didn't get much rest until the lights were back on around 3 am.  After we went to bed I kept waking up in a panic every few minutes worried that the power went out again and the chicks were getting cold. 

But all is just fine this morning.  And hopefully no babies were lost last night.  The storm has settled and even the chickens and turkey have come out to see how things are.  Now I have hopes of catching a quick nap before starting dinner...