Archives for April 2011

The construction of the new goat house and chicken coop has begun! It’s a good thing too since Thursday night I drive to Maryland to pick up my new Tennessee Fainting Goat, and Melina is due to kid on the 8th or 9th of May with Cissy following right behind being due on the 27th or 28th!

The cement foundation posts were put in last week and dried over the weekend. The chickens seemed to be enjoying wandering amongst their new foundation structures on Sunday.


And today they got the very initial framing done of the goat house. It’s not going to be as tall as those beams are, but will be cut to length when everything is properly positioned. It is being built in 3 sections that will be bolted together, as I plan on taking it with me when I get to move to my real farm one day. It’s very exciting.


And as promised, below are photos of my chicks that are now in the brooder coop. They are 25 days old here and at what I call the awkward gangly teenage stage. They’re almost completely feathered out now, but have a lot of growing to do.

It was a sad day here. I lost both of my little premature chicks. My big Jersey Giant chick, who we named Cookie this morning after the adorable penguin at the Cincinnati Zoo, and I had such high hopes for last night, died shortly after I fed him this morning.


And my little Eggroll, who was so tiny naturally because she was an premature Old English Bantam chick, passed away this afternoon.

These deaths are hard for me, but have once again proven the point that chicks that don’t naturally break out of their shells probably weren’t meant to be born in the first place. Maybe one of these days I’ll finally learn not to intervene. It’s hard though.

My 5 beautiful remaining chicks are doing wonderfully though. Today they are even showing the beginning of their tiny wing feathers.

Tomorrow I will remember to take pictures of the chicks that are out in the brooder coop. You won’t believe how big they’ve gotten in 24 days!

I had a bunch of broody chickens about a month ago, yet with no rooster around all of the eggs they were sitting on would never hatch. No matter how many times I took the eggs away from them, they would just lay and gather more and try again. I finally broke down and ordered 3 different kinds of fertile hatching eggs off of eBay. Of course by the time the eggs arrived every single chicken had given up and had no interest in laying on eggs anymore. I couldn’t just throw the eggs out, so I threw them in my incubator. I really don’t need anymore chicks — I’ve got 10 chicks out in the brooder coop getting bigger by the day, and more chicks coming over the next two weeks — but it seemed like murder to not at least try.


“Candling” is the process that allows you to observe embryo development. In a darkened room you hold the egg up to a strong flashlight and should be able to see if you’ve got an embryo growing inside the egg, or if you’ve got a dud. I’ve never been very good at this. My friend Sue is super at it, but she lives all the way up in Monroe. It’s also much harder to do on brown eggs, and all but the bantam eggs I ordered were brown. So, come hatching date, without any success at candling I really had no idea whether I was going to have anything hatch or not.

Eggs hatch at or about 21 days. This would have been Thursday, the day I was scheduled to return from Williamsburg from my vacation with the twins. Yet India called me on Wednesday night and said we had cracks in a few of the eggs already. I was excited that at least we were going to have some success with the eggs. On Thursday morning we got a photo of one new baby chick from India. When we (finally) got home after flight delays, there were two chicks. The first one was my tiny Old English Bantam. She’s by far the smallest chick I’ve ever had before, and she’s adorable.


The second chick to hatch, which we came home to find, was a blue laced red wyandotte. The eBay photos of these were really unusual, so I’m excited to see what they turn out like. I can tell you that I’ve never had a chick this color before. She’s got a beautiful copper color to some of her feathers.


The 3rd and 5th chicks to hatch were both Blue Jersey Giants. I’ve never had this breed before, but as the name implies, they are the largest purebred chicken breed and lays large brown egg.


And then there’s number 5 to hatch. Another Old English Bantam. He had cracked the egg about 3/4 of the way around, but wasn’t progressing any further. You could hear it peeping in it’s egg, but it wasn’t coming out.


Now I’ve had experience with “helping” eggs along. The last batch of eggs I hatched a little over a year ago produced “stumpy” – a chick that probably wasn’t meant to be born. I hand-fed that adorable little chick every day until my husband got the brilliant idea to give it a bath under the faucet after a feeding. It was dead in the morning. Even knowing this, however, my kids still pleaded with me to help this little chick out. So, I carefully peeled off the shell. There was a ton of membrane stuck to it’s feathers, but it made it through the night.

I took out my extra incubator and put her in it so the bigger chicks couldn’t pick on her or step on her. This morning, having made it through the night and seemingly stronger, I took out a heating pad, my tiny syringe feeder and some warm water and held it in my lap while carefully wetting the dried membrane on it. I peeled this away as it softened as best I could. Finally it’s wings were free and the heating pad prevented it from getting chilled. It also drank some water from the dropper. She’s stronger tonight but still in what I would call “critical” condition.



The 7th chick was a similar situation, but it was one of the Blue Jersey Giant eggs. It, too, had broken it’s shell about 3/4 of the way around, but wasn’t progressing.


Again after pleading from the kids I intervened. When I started breaking through the shell a bit this big foot came out and grabbed on to my finger. It was the sweetest thing.


This time I was careful to get as much membrane and shell off as possible the first time around, and I can tell that this chick is going to be just fine. It’s already walking around, eating, and chirping it’s head off. His feathers are still pretty matted and it has a bit of shell remnant on it’s back that I’ll clean off tomorrow, but it’s big and healthy.


I don’t know whether I’m doing the right thing or not. And not being an expert at this, it’s possible that just having your humidity levels off in the incubator can greatly effect the shell’s ability to break properly. I couldn’t bear to think that something I’d done had prevented a chick from being born.

So the count right now stands at 5 healthy chicks and 2 still in the incubator in what I’ll call the Intensive Care Unit. There are 8 more eggs in the incubator, but I’m not holding out a lot of hope on any more hatching at this point. I’ll keep you posted.