This time around I only candled the eggs a few times and didn't worry as much about the humidity and temp. After the first week I discovered that 3 of the eggs weren't fertilized so I tossed those out. The rest of the eggs grew blood vessels and I could start to see little bodies flipping and turning in there.
At day 18 we stopped turning them and waited again.
That same day they started pipping. That night two were hatched! Even though you are really not supposed to, I "helped" one because it was really stuck. It was able to crack all the shell off around it, but it was stuck to the inner membrane. So I gently took a moistened Q-tip and peeled it slowly off until it was free. I'm so glad that worked out!
The next day the kids enjoyed watching the rest of the eggs hatch (except 2 which, after candling a couple of times throughout the day, I realized were dead in their shells.)
This little guy was so cute. It just popped it's top off and hung out for a while staring at us.
We had a lot of visitors who came to see the chicks and a huge group almost made a hatching!
But I'm really glad they couldn't stay (and so are they) because 45 minutes after they left, it hatched and it wasn't pretty. It still had it's yolk sac attached to a big red blob of tissue and all of that was still attached to the shell. I was waiting for it to lay down and die because I have seen and read that happens most often to these chicks/ducks (I guess it's fairly common). Anyhoo... it was apparent that it was not going to die right away because it was jumping all around the incubator chirping loudly and dragging all the stuff hanging out of it and the shell with it. I didn't want it to hurt itself, so I blocked him in with tissues while I googled what to do.
I didn't sign up for this part.
He still wanted to be on the move. So I cut off the piece that was attached to the shell and hoped that somehow the rest could still be reabsorbed.
No such luck.
I read somewhere that you could tie it off like an umbilical cord and hope for the best. So that's what I did. I used some dental floss to tie it off right next to the chick's belly. The rest of the junk was still hanging out. So I started hacking away at it until it was gone.
Honestly, I think that was one of the most disgusting things I have ever done, except maybe having to pull earthworms out of the ground in my rubber gloves and cut them in chunks to feed my neighbor's pet Salamanders. Yuck! But I felt sorry for the poor fella. I said a little prayer and moved him into the brooder with everyone else, fully expecting him to die within a few hours if not days. The other chicks pecked at the floss and tissue hanging out but eventually it started to dry up.
The kids and I watched anxiously for the first little poo to come out of this little mutant. When it did, we jumped for joy! And when he survived for more than 4 days, I said another prayer of thanks to God and decided that He had given us a miracle! So we named the chick the only name we could name it: "Flossy the Miracle Chicken."
Flossy is the darker brownish/yellow one. Can you see the green dental floss?
After some research we determined that we have 3 Ameraucanas and 4 Barred Rocks.
Here are a few more shots of our chicks...
Our opinion is that chicks are much easier to care for than ducks if you live in Suburbia like us. But! Ducks have more personality and enjoy life much more. Mason definitely preferred the ducks and eagerly awaits every visit to see all of his little farm animals. Kaiah too :)
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