There are a dozen little chicks in the nursery so far. There seems to be four different types here. As they grow older we will be able to see what breeds they are.
Follow along our adventure as we make the transition from corporate city life to the world of natural farming. Each day brings a new experience and brings us to a deeper understanding about the life and spirit that made America great. At our farm we do our best to give the animals we raise a natural, free, happy, stressfree lifestyle. Our mission is to learn and share how to manage a farming operation that is both profitable and humane.
UPDATE:
ReplyDeleteThree more chicks hatched last night, so there is only one chicken egg and two duck eggs left in the incubator. So far we have 100% success in healthy chickens.
There was one egg that had trouble. The egg itself was cracked, which we didnt notice until candling. Not wnating to throw away a growing fertilized egg we chose to give it a chance. When hatching time came this one struggled for some reason. It started cracking out in the early morning yeasterday but by night not much progress was made. We chose to step in and help by carefully peeling back a larger hole in the shell. The very tired chick slowly made its way out and by bedtime it was half out and sleeping. This morning the chick looks fine! It is up and running around hte incubator with its siblings.
As a rule we do not intervene in nature's process, but in this case since the trouble appeared to not be genetic but rather caused by a cracked shell, we felt ok helping out. ITs nice to see that it worked out!
TONIGHT's UPDATE:
ReplyDeleteAll the eggs have hatched except for one chicken egg and the two duck eggs. We will wait another day on the chicken egg then candle it again to see if something happened. The duck eggs we didnt track well enough to know the exact hatch day so we will let them go for a few more days.
From experience I know that one thing you NEVER want is for a bad egg to stay in the incubator too long and EXPLODE. We had that happen in the past and it was the single worst experience we have had on the farm.
Final Update:
ReplyDeleteCandleing hte one egg that didnt hatch proved that it didnt make it. The two duck eggs are still growing and moving inside. Overall thie batch did amazingly well, especially considering that half of hte chickens eggs were refridgerated before incubating.
After the duck eggs hatch we will clean the incubator and hatch another batch.