Hatching Chicks 2008

Even after all our trouble last year hatching chicks, we went ahead and tried again and this year we had GREAT SUCCESS!!

I ordered a dozen mixed breed bantam eggs from Ebay and we were thrilled at the variety of bantam chicks we got.  Some chicks came from green eggs, some from little tiny white eggs. some from beige eggs, some from white eggs and some from brown eggs.

When the chicks had been in the incubator for 7 days, we "candled" them (held them over a flashlight while cupping the eggs) to see if we could see the baby chicks developing in the eggs.  You can see the black dot just above the X.  that is its eye.

You can see both the eye spot and body shadow in this egg.

Embryo Photos

Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	Day 5
Day 6	Day 7	Day 8	Day 9	Day 10
Day 11	Day 12	Day 13	Day 14	Day 15
Day 16	Day 17	Day 18	Day 19	Day 20
Day 21

source of the embryo pictures

The aftermath

One of our little chicks sleeps on his back...strange.  It always scares me because I keep thinking he is dead but he's just asleep.

Silly chick

Yesterday, we noticed that one of the chicks doesn't stand right anymore.  His leg stretches out to the side instead of staying straight under him.  It's called a splayed leg or a spraddled leg..

 

The way to fix it is to band-aid the legs together for a few days and everything is supposed to go back in normal working order.

Update: One month after hatching, we took 9 of the chicks out to live on a friend's father's farm.  We're so excited that they can be real chickens now.  Emily wanted to take all their pictures before we packed them up to move to the country.  so here they are.....

 

 

                                           Mo Mo                                                            Niblets

 

                                            Ginger                                                              Cookie

 

                                          Bandit                                                                 Hawk

 

                                       Duncan                                                                     Zebo

 

  Theo

 

the triplets, Chip, Dale and Rocky

 

This is their new country home....wonderful isn't it?

 

 

 

 

We kept Zebo to continue working on his legs.  No matter what we do, we can't seem to fix his legs but he is very determined to be a regular chicken just like everyone else.  We also kept Duncan and MoMo to keep him company.  We have continued to tape his legs to form a hobble.  in attempts to keep him still, we wrapped him in a shirt and propped him up but he always managed to get out of it.

 

 

Next we tried to make a swing for him so he could stand but still be kept somewhat still but he got out of this one too.

 

 

See his poor little leg?  It sticks straight out behind him but he manages to get himself anywhere he wants to be and I've found a no-kill animal refuge that is willing to take him in when he gets too big for us to handle.  It'll be sad seeing him go because we've grown so attached to him.

 

 

 

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