Saturday, February 26, 2011

Chickens on Amazon and more.

I've always heard you can get just about anything on amazon so I decided to check this out for myself. Specifically in the area of chickens of course.  Bear with me here because I am saving the best for last.

There are incubators that are cheap (small) like this one for under $25
 

and more expensive ones like this one for $469.00


Personally I'm glad we were able to make ours with stuff we already had around the house.  Lucky us.

Surprisingly I did not find any fertilized chicken eggs but did come across an incubator (like the yellow one above) that comes with 4 fertilized quail eggs.  I think I'm going to pass on that one for now.

All of this blogging, picture taking of chicks, cleaning the chicks homes, feeding and watering them can really be stressing.  I need something to help me relax.  I'm sure amazon has something for that too.  Oh yes, let's just see!!

Bingo!  Amazon does have the answer:  The "Relaxman Relaxation Capsule"

 

 Ok, so at $39,995 it is a little out of my price range by about $39990 but hey, who's counting.  Reading about it and the reviews posted on Amazon was the next best thing.  After reading some of the reviews over the last few days I knew I could no longer keep this secret to myself.  I laughed a lot and can say I am really relaxed.  Plus I saved myslef $39995.00

Check it out on Amazon and be prepared to laugh:
http://www.amazon.com/Relaxman-Relaxation-Capsule

Enjoy!




Sunday, February 20, 2011

Chicken Little Escapes

Well tonight Chicken Little made a daring and noisy escape.  Hence CL didn't get very far.  Cl was caught in the act literally.

CL has pretty much outgrown the box anyway.  CL doesn't know it yet but he/she is getting new digs with much more room.   We have so much scrap wood and chicken wire around that building something is an easy task.  CL is just not big enough yet to be integrated with our bigger chickens.

We're thinking that CL may be a girl now since we see no signs of a comb.  What do you think? Leave a comment and tell us your thoughts.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Todays Chick Flicks!

Not much to report but here are some new pictures of our chicks and also of Chicken Little who is now over a month old. The chicks are 1 week old today except for the one leghorn who will be one week old tomorrow.


After 1 week this Leghorn already has the start of feathers:


Here's chicken little who is not so little anymore.


These chickens are a lot of work.  They mess up their boxes quickly and it needs at least daily clean-up.  If anyone would have told me years ago that I would be hatching and taking care of chicks I would have never believed it.  Who knew?

Splayed leg chicken and how to fix it

We have noticed that one of our chicks has the splayed leg that we have heard so much about but never experienced.

How to help the chick and fix the splay leg?

Well I did a google search and found out a simple band-aid can help.  Cut the band-aid in half lengthwise and place each chick leg at the edge of the white pad and then wrap each end across the chick leg and onto the white pad.  The white pad is the exact length apart the chick's legs needs to be. Here's how the band-aid should look after cutting it.



This chick is on it's second band-aid. The 1st one wore off rather quickly.  Usually they only need one from what I've read but sometimes they need more time.

Here are 2 close-ups of the chick with it's band-aid on.



This chick is walking so much better and should be fine. Who thought the solution could be a simple band-aid.

The 2nd Leghorn chicken is hatched!

We got a 2nd leghorn.  Just like the other one this one needed help too.  It actually seemed to be ok and working around the egg but then it just stopped and kept chirping.  So this one got help too.

Here is before we helped:


Here is the chick after it hatched.  Still very frail and week but no blood and only a little bit of feces on it when it came out of the egg.


It's doing well now as you can see.



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Helping the 1st Leghorn Hatch - Sunday 2-13-11

I'm back after a brief hiatus.  Just been so busy and haven't found time to update until now.

On Sunday we realized the 1st white egg with the leghorn chicken was having a problem hatching.  So against sound advice, I decided to help it hatch.  Some of the pictures I will post look kinda gross and bloody.  They look bloody because you can see the chickens pink skin through the egg membrane and it looks red when the membrane is wet.

Happy to say though, this one hatched successfully and needed very little help afterwards.  It is now thriving on it's own and it is a bit aggressive, just like it's mother.

In the image below, I have removed some of the eggshell and of the membrane. You have to be SO CAREFUL when doing this.



This next picture show the shell completely removed and the membrane is wet where you see the red.


This next picture is right after the chick is born.  You can see some blood and some feces which I did clean from him.  The chick is exhausted.



Here is the chick a bit later after getting some rest, food, and water.


Here is yet another picture.


So this little guy made it.  I tried to help two other chicks out of their eggs.  I hatched them, they had pipped but had gone no further. I removed their shells and helped them out.  They were so frail.  I fed them food/water but they did not make it through the night.  So not all do well when you help them out. I'm not posting pics of those chicks for obvious reasons.

After we got done hatching the 1st leghorn we saw a 2nd leghorn egg had been pipped. Wow!  We are excited about this!

Check back for more updates.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Day 21 We have some new baby chicks!

Nothing to report yesterday but what a difference a day makes!

We saw our first egg pips later this morning.  Day 22 started at7:00 PM. At about 8:00 PM we had our 1st chick, the 2nd by 9:30 PM and the 3rd by 11:30 PM.

I marked the 1st picture below to show which eggs hatched first.  The red numbers on the eggs show which eggs we had seen moving and the order we had observed movement.

The 1st egg in the process of hatching
The 1st chick right after the hatch!


The 3rd egg hatching was incredible for me.  I was actually able to see that one during the hatch and get it all on film.  I'll be uploading the videos to You Tube.

The first chick's name is Noodle, the 2nd chick's name is Garlic, and the 3rd chick's name is French Fry. I didn't pick out the names.  I get to pick out the name for the white egg which the chicken has pipped through.

Here's a picture of the 1st 2 chicks after the hatching.  



I'm not sure what I will name the next chick to arrive it but it will have a food name.  

Check in tomorrow for new pics, and You Tube information.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

2nd Incubation - Day 20

We just started Day 20 around 7:00 PM.

We can see some minor egg movement with four of the chicken eggs.  I marked the picture below:


We came up with a couple of new things we will do for the next incubation.

1.  We will number each and every egg.
2.  Planning on purchasing a UPS for backup in case electricity goes out again.
3.  Weigh each egg before and at least once during the incubation process

Our temperature is hovering around 99-100 degrees.  Humidity is around 59-60%.

On a lighter note, we tried watching the movie Chicken Little with our son.  Got the DVD from the library today. We never got to finish watching it because the DVD kept freezing.  While I LOVE technology I can honestly say I only had a VCR "eat" maybe a few tapes in say 20 years.  In 5 years I've had countless DVD's get beat up by normal kid use.

Hopefully tomorrow brings some news of a new chick.  We have decided to name them all food names.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Our 2nd Incubation - 18 Eggs this time

We did things differently for this incubation period.  


Here's a list of everything:


1.  Marked eggs with X on one side and an O on the other side for turning purposes


2.  I also dated the eggs when they were laid.  We got these from our hens this time
We have a Silver laced Wyndotte, a  speckled Sussex, and a Leghorn.  The rooster is a Barred Rock.


3.  We got rid of the dimmer switch in the incubator, and replaced it with a hot water
 tank thermostat.


4.  We kept the humidity around 16% (no water needed in the incubator) until the 18th day.  On the 18th day we added 2 jars and 1 cup of water to bring it up to 59%-60% humidity.


5.  We turned the eggs 3 times a day.


This 2nd incubation period was so much less complicated then the 1st.  I think that was due mainly to the thermostat we added. The temperature still fluctuated a bit but it was so minor.


We started out with a 100 watt light bulb.  It constantly kept turning off and on due to the thermostat regulating the temp around 100 degrees. It was also really bright. We also wondered it it would burn out quicker from going off/on so much so after a week we changed it to a 75 Watt bulb.  The light was more consistent that way.


For some strange reason though the temperature would vary by a degree lower at night and in the morning and go a degree higher the rest of the time.  We learned to just barely touch the thermostat to keep it around 100 degrees.  That was the temperature we wanted to stay at consistently.


So tonight was the beginning of day 18.  We had a HUGE problem today.  Our electricity went out for over 30 minutes. Completely unexpected and we were in a panic.  The temperature dropped down to 91 degrees within minutes.  We got 3 candles, lit them, and put them in the incubator.  Within about 5-7 minutes the temp went back up to 95 degrees and then up to 97 degrees right before the power came back on.  What a relief!


Maybe next time we may get an UPS to plug the incubator into...we'll see.


Here's the picture I took less the 30 minutes ago.




We need to put something underneath the eggs so they don't roll around.  We think if they are rolling around then the chickens won't be able to actually break through the shells. Maybe that was the problem with Chicken Little. We don't know, but that is what popped into our heads.


Check back tomorrow to see if we have any new chickies!

Chicken Little - 1 month old

Today Chicken  Little is officially 1 month old or 28 days to be exact. He/She is now in his own box.  We don't think he is old enough to go out in the coop with the older, much bigger chickens.  He/She is doing well.  We put a mirror in the box with him along with the surrogate mommy chicken stuffed animal.

Chicken Little likes looking in the mirror and keeping company with the other chicken.  Sometimes they are friends and sometimes they fight.  It's cute. We are thinking CL is a boy because of the fast growth.

Look at the picture and leave a comment, what do you think?  Boy or Girl?


CL is going into a much bigger box soon.  CL has grown so much in just the past week and as you can see, almost all of the down is gone, having been replaced by feathers.

We are expecting a new hatch within the next 3 days. Check out the next post for more details!

Chicken Little - A new beginning

We named our newborn chick, Chicken Little.  We still don't know if it is a boy or girl.  Chicken Little did not seem to be thriving.  Just laying around alot and not able to stand well.  We added an old stuffed animal for a surrogate mommy chicken.


Hubby decided we need to start feeding the chick.  He added water to the chick food until it was like a gruel consistency and used a twisty tie as a makeshift spoon.


We fed the chick A LOT.  During the day it was about 1-2 hours apart for each feeding, the night time was a bit rougher.  We took turns waking up and feeding the chick throughout the night.

About 3 days later Chicken Little was thriving. CL was also very attached to us and loved to be held.  It was still very small as you can see in the picture below.

We had been keeping the chick in the incubator during this period.  By about the 5-6th day CL had taken to jumping up and down in the window to get our attention.  We found a really little spoon to feed him with the chick was now eating the chick food in a mashed type form.  We put it in a little cup and he/she would greedily eat out the cup and also drink water out of another small cup.

Chicken little is now thriving! Yeah!

So how is Chicken Little after the 1st Month?? Check out then next post and see how he/she has grown.

Chicken Little - The life story of our 1st hatch - Part 2

We were SLOWLY trying to help our chick hatch.  We just kept working on removing the shell without damaging the membrane.  The membrane has blood vessels running all through it.  As the membrane dries out the blood vessels shrivel up as the chick hatches. That my summary of it, I could be stating that incorrectly so don't take it as the gospel truth.

Here's a couple of more pictures of Chicken Little during our "hatching" process.




Right after the picture above, I was able to gently pick up the egg, tilt it, and gently was able to slide the little chick out.  

The chick was still attached to the shell and part of the membrane by it's umbilical cord.


It took the chick a few hours to get to this point where it was standing up.  We removed as much of the shell/membrane as we could.

The people at the chicken forum were so helpful and inquired how the hatch went and how the chick was doing.  The chick was alive but would he stay that way?  That was our new concern.

Chicken Little - The life story of our 1st hatch - Part 1

Right around Christmas time, we received 4 Aracuana eggs which we were told were fertile.  Ok, great news for us!  We wanted to try out the incubator that hubby built and we want more chickens.   Here's a picture of the incubator below:



This incubator was built with scrap wood, an old computer fan, light bulb and fixture, a couple of plugs, some old R3 insulation, a dimmer switch to control the bulb, misc wires, and the rack we purchased and cut to fit.  We also purchased the thermometer for less then $10 at Home Depot.

We should have had a thermostat in here to control the temperature. The temperature seemed to fluctuate more then we expected.  We tried to keep it around 100-102 degrees. We kept the humidity around 50% to start and then lowered it to around 35%.  We really didn't know what we were doing, we were getting so much conflicting information. One day we came home and it was at 106.  Ahhh!!! We were afraid our chickens were going to be fried.

On day 18, we were excited!  We put the eggs below the rack, added another glass of water to raise the humidty to around 59-61%  and we waited.  Waited and waited and waited and waited.........................

On day 19 we saw one of the eggs moving.  We were SO EXCITED!

On day 20, the movement practically ceased.  In our desperate but clearly misguided attempt to save this chicken my hubby decided to "operate".  He carefully was able to remove the shell from the top part of the egg leaving the membrane intact.  He used one of his tools to do this. It took quite a while. He poked a hole in the membrane for the chick to breathe - "DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!!. Never do that, blood came out so we put the egg back in the incubator and left it alone.
I joined a chicken forum to seek help.  They were so helpful and told us to keep pulling off the shell a little at a time and stop if any blood came out.  We did that.  So the chick was breathing and taking water we would give to it via a paper towel.   This is the 1st picture below of what I just described.


See the little beak sticking out?








We were so excited to get this little chick rescued and hoping he would live.

More to follow in Part 2, check it out!

Introduction!

Long time chicken enthusiasts here.

My husband is the one who got me started with the chickens.  It all started almost 2 years ago when we got some chicks for easter.  He fully intended to keep them and raise them.  We were living in a very urban area so it was interesting.

He built a chicken coop in the back yard and LOTS of people saw those chickens.  Eventually we came under the radar of the local zoning authority.  They wanted the coop and chickens gone.  It worked out because we ended up moving out to the country (well kind of) and we have 3 chickens, 1 rooster, 1 mini horse and a chicken who is 1 month old.  Not sure if that chicken is male or female yet. Hatching that chicken was quite an adventure.

I plan to document that chicken's hatch as well as try to answer all of the questions we had in reference to hatching, humidity, building your own incubator on the cheap, etc.  If you think of anything, drop us a line!