Candling is fun!

So here we are, twelve days into the egg experiment and all is going fairly well. Candling is very cool - in all the chickens we had, and eggs we incubated when I was a kid, we never candled any of them. Of course, my method is fairly primitive - I'm using Mike's old dive light as it's about the right size. So while I can see what's happening it's not super bright. If we do this again, I'll have to make myself a better setup.

As far as I can tell we have 2 good eggs, and one maybe. I'm pretty sure that one Maran and one Dominique are progressing as planned, the other Dominique egg looks like it may have stopped maturing around day 6 (according to a handy photo guide I found online) which means that now it's just a warm rotten egg - yum!

Hmmm. A friend at work is thinking about surprising her kids with chicks/pullets on Easter. Her son Will is really excited to have chickens - they even came over a few weeks ago (did I mention that before?) to see my set-up. If she decides to, I may see if Denise is okay with me keeping her chicks (from the eggs) for a couple weeks so that I can tuck three feed store chicks for Darrin in with Phyllis as well. I think if I put them in at night after the eggs hatch that she'd accept them without question. Then at 3 weeks I can deliver Denise's chicks to her (sans Phyllis) and Phyl can keep Darrin's chicks growing until Easter (they'd be 4 weeks old then).

Fun! Here's some photos - Phyl's setup in the shed in Jake's old crate, and her in her cardboard box nest.

Chicks in progress

Well, to catch everyone up, here are the events of the last week:

Valentine's Day - Mike and I played it casual as we do every year. We exchanged cards, he brought me flowers and I made dinner.

Thursday - Phyl's eggs arrived at last. I put all 6 under her and she was happy as a clam - or perhaps happy as a broody hen?

Friday - I took two eggs away from Phyl as it was pretty obvious she couldn't cover them all as well as she needed to (the outer eggs were a lot cooler than the center eggs).

Saturday - we went skiing with some friends and their 3 year old daughter. It was a beautiful, warm sunny day. Had a blast! That night I discovered that Agnes has a cold, or perhaps bronchitis, either way she's sneezing and wheezing and generally not feeling too good. Likely why she stopped laying a couple weeks ago. I've turned the heatlamp on 24x7 again hoping to give her some respite from the cold.

Sunday - we had a lazy day. Ran errands, played with the dogs, then went to friends' house for "Thanksgiving in February". We do this every year. Buy a turkey when they go on sale, then have a dinner where we all bring our favorite dish.

Today - I candled Phyl's eggs just to make sure this grand experiment is working. 3 of them looked just fine - I could see the dark spot of the embryo and the beginnings of the blood vessel web. But one was cracked. So, that leaves her with 3. Hopefully she'll hatch at least one or two chicks. Otherwise I'm not sure what she'll do!

Lucy's the smartest

So, slowly, slowly my girls are becoming more friendly. Most mornings they come towards me when I go into the coop - looking for morning treats. But, Lucy is the smartest of them all. She's learned to eat cracked corn out of my hand. So sweet! Especially because she's the biggest of them all. Penny is "this" close to doing it as well, she's just a bit shyer than Lucy is. Pru and Agnes are interested, but not enough to come too close yet.

In other news, Phyl is all settled into the dog crate in the shed. She doesn't seem willing to come out of the nest to eat/drink/poop on her own even though she has clean water and plenty of food in the crate as well. So my new morning routine is to take her out of her nest, put her in with the big girls to do what's needed, then put her back in her nest 15 minutes later. Seems to be working so far - her eggs will arrive tomorrow or Thursday. I'm keeping a close eye on her to make sure that she's maintaining her weight and bright eyes.

Hopefully this will all work out - if not, I'm not sure what to do with her...

Hatching eggs are on their way

My friend Denise on the peninsula has agreed to take any chicks I can hatch. Yay! So yesterday we ordered 6 standard size eggs (about all little Phyl can handle, and maybe more (we'll see). We ordered 3 Cuckoo Maran eggs and 3 Dominique eggs. We're hoping to hatch 4-5 of them and then hoping to get at least 2 hens out of it.

I gave Phyl 3 golf balls to sit on last night to keep her broody. This weekend I'm setting up a broody box for her in the crate that Jake outgrew so that we can move her in there Saturday night. We're going to keep her in the garage. The eggs ship on Monday and I think will be here Wednesday. Then 3 weeks later we should have eggs! The way the dates fall mean the chicks should hatch on my birthday, give or take 24 hours - so much fun!

Once the chicks hatch, I'm going to meet Denise half way and hand off the chicks and Phyl to her to raise. She's got a small coop that she's no longer using and is going to put them in there for the first 4-6 weeks. I'll keep you posted on how this goes. What fun!

And the broodiness continues...

Phyl continues to be broody. I've tried giving her ice cubes to sit on - they just made her wet and crabby. I've been pulling her out a couple times a day, but she has a bite to eat and then goes right back. The last two nights I've turned out the light and put her on the roost bar, but she goes right back in the morning. All that's happened as a result is that Agnes and Pru stopped laying as well.

So now I'm trying to find someone that either wants a broody Seabright Bantam, or wants a few chicks. I'd love to buy some fertile eggs for her to sit on and let her hatch them, but I don't have room for any more birds so I'd need to be able to give them (and her with them) away as soon as they hatched. Oh well. One friend of mine is considering it. If that falls through I may post on Craigslist and see if I get any hits.

Finally, here are some new pics from Sunday...




Phyl in the nest box - being crabby





Penny looking pretty.




Lucy - the biggest of them all




How come if you take a picture of a group of hens you always get more butts than anything else?

Phyl goes broody

This week I was once again traveling for work, spending 5 days in Orlando. I left the house about 5:30am Sunday morning. Mike didn't collect the eggs again until late Tuesday night. He mentioned that he was only getting one or two a day, instead of the 2 or 3 we've been getting the past couple weeks since Pru started laying. Last night I got home late and went out to say hi to the girls. Turns out the heat lamp for the girls had gotten unplugged. I plugged it back in and noticed that Phyl was sleeping in the nest box. I just thought, poor little chicken, she must be cold!

I went back in and was talking to Mike and mentioned that Phyl was so cold she was sleeping in the nest box. He said no, she's been there all the time for the past couple days. Sure enough, I went out this morning about 8am - all the other girls were out and looking for treats. Phyl was in the box, looking pissed and then tried to peck me when I moved her to see if there were any early am eggs. She's definitely gone broody on us. Too bad, as I was enjoying the volume of eggs.

I looked around online while eating lunch to see if I could find any tips on getting her to quit. The only one I saw that seems feasible with the set-up I've got, is to give her some ice cubes to sit on. Apparently the coldness on her underside should persuade her to stop. I'm going to give it a try tomorrow if she's still there...

I know I don't have many visitors here yet - but if anyone comes by - any tips for un-broodying a hen?

In other news, Pru laid a two-yolker yesterday! I'll have to get some pics this weekend now that I'm done traveling for a while.