Quick Chick Update

We wound up with five chicks hatching out yesterday. I had to help two out of the shells because they were taking so long the membrane around them had dried out and stuck them to the shell. It was a bit nerve-wracking, but I figured there was nothing to lose. The chicks would have died in the shells, but they are running around with the others now. It was so much fun watching the hatch, I wish I could just throw some more right in, but I can't reasonable fill my laundry room with chicks (can I?), so I have to wait just a little bit! Next time I'm going to get something to measure the humidity in the incubator which can be one cause of low hatches. But I'm not too disappointed with my first try at it. It's five more than we would have had, right?

These pictures are from yesterday. I will get some more today or tomorrow showing them fluffed up a bit more.

Our first chick that hatched out. The only one that is mostly yellow. Tried to climb back into its shell more than once!

Same chick a bit more fluffed up.

Encouraging #2 to hatch. The chicks in the shells did respond to the peeping of the other chicks ,and you could see more movement from them when the others would peep. The chicks in the shell would peep back, too.

This is number four, I think. One of the ones that needed a hand.

A couple group shots.

It appears #2 does sport a mohawk--I hope that isn't an early indication of rebellious tendencies!

Make Something Monday #14

So I can't take sole credit for "making" these, but I did raise the parents from couple day old chicks, and I did do all the regulating of the incubator. Today is hatch day for our eggs in the incubator. Last night two eggs had little cracks in them, and this morning we have a chick! The other egg is cracked open more, and there is another egg with a crack. You can see the chicks inside the eggs moving and hear them peeping to each other. So looks like we have at least three chicks! We'll see what the day brings. (I hopped up to check the eggs right before posting this and another chick has pipped through its egg--so that's four!)

You can see in the picture that the chick is still all wet from being inside the egg. We will leave the chicks in the incubator which is nice and toasty warm to dry off and fluff up before we move them to their brooder. I'm going to set them up on their own for about a week until they are a little bigger and then try putting all the chicks in together since they are about a week or so apart in age.

Waiting...

We've got eggs in the incubator now. They've actually been in about a week and a half. Which means we have about another week and a half to see how many chicks we get. I'm cautiously optimistic about our results. I put a dozen eggs in for a starter batch, and I only put green eggs in because I think they are prettiest! We started with 10 chicks last summer. So I think a dozen will do fine if we get a good hatch rate. We'll use roosters for the freezer and keep hens for eggs or sale. Paul is going to build a smaller chicken run for these so the big chickens won't pick on them and we can raise them up separately. He's also got to get some kind of brooder setup built this week. The last batch I raised in the laundry room in a couple big cardboard boxes scooted together, but it was summer and really warm. They were a couple days old when we got them, and we got away without keeping a light over them. This time with them being just hatched and the weather cooler, I think we need to get a light in there for them. We've still got one more rooster than we need around here, but we just haven't taken the time to send him to freezer camp.

And I keep trying to figure out if our goats are getting rounder, but unfortunately, they are quite round to start with! As long as breedings took for the goats, we are looking at some time close to the end of June for kids. I'm considering whether we will keep Bella once the others kid out. I'm not getting huge amounts of milk from her, but she's been good about letting me milk her. I usually get between 2.5-3 cups per morning. Since the baby is on her during the day time, I don't milk at night. And she really doesn't seem to be warming up to me any. She only comes willingly at feeding time. We also don't know any history on her. Even though she is a dairy breed and supposed to be registered, some goats are bred more for show lines and not milk lines. We don't know anything about her background and breeding. If you buy goats from a breeder who does dairy goats for milk, they should have records of milk production and be breeding their line to improve production. Betty Bob and Bambi were both from a breeder who has plans to try to get her dairy approved to sell milk. She also shows her goats and keeps careful records of how much milk they produce. So I'm hoping that Betty Bob and Bambi will be good milk producers, and if they are, I am leaning towards selling Bella. I'm going to keep milking her until then, though. Without the baby on her, I figure she should produce about a quart or a little more a day. That's not enough for our family, but might work well for other people's situation, and somebody might appreciate being able to buy a goat in milk already. Nothing is set, obviously, but those are some things I'm mulling over.