3 Cheeps From the Coop

Connor with chick #1

I posted on Facebook the hatching of the chick on Thursday, since Blogger was down for many hours.

1st chick, Pooh and the other 2 against the bear.

Yes, they eat on nice china.

I was right about 2 chicks hatching Friday! Another one from Omelet's egg and one from a green egg or Easter Egger. They hatched a few hours apart and were still wet and couldn't walk very well.  The one the hatched Thursday was running around, drinking water and eating.  It must take about 24 hours for a chick to get hungry and strong enough to eat.

You can really tell the 3 different ages.

3rd chick just hatched.

Tonight all three are eating, drinking, running around and cheeping.

 

I do feel a little guilty taking them from Little Ace after she has sat on the eggs for 29 days.  None of the 3 that are left have hatched today.  Surely 2 more will hatch tomorrow.  I'm thinking about leaving the ones that hatch now with Little Ace.  I just don't know if they will be okay.  I don't have room for 6 more chickens, so I could afford to experiment.
I just hate seeing dead chicks.

See the yellow fuzzy butts.

  
Grandson, Chase, has named the first chick, Pooh, because when Chase came over I had put a little Pooh Bear in the crate for it to snuggle with. Tonight, I can no longer tell the first 2 chicks apart.  They are both black with yellow on their wing tips and fuzzy yellow butts.  The other one is a little strange looking.  It appears to be all black, but there is a hint of a brown shading.  When it grows up it will likely be mostly brown.

Anyway they are safe and warm under the red heat lamp and snuggling with Pooh and each other.
Just 2 brown eggs and 1 green one left to hatch.

What's Happening With the Hens and Eggs

Well Little Ace has been sitting on eggs now for 25 days.  Since she can not count, she will sit there until the last one hatches or I give up and throw it away.  She started on April 15 with 9 eggs.  Someone pecked holes in 2 of them.  One chick hatched on day 21 as it should, but the little chick got out of the coop and into the run and died.  I have checked in the coop for peeping chicks at least 3 times a day.  Today, just before dark I checked on them and found that Cracker and Little Ace are both sitting on the eggs.  I bet this is very rare.  Brooding hens are very protective and usually won't let any one-human or fowl near her nest.  But Cracker has been sitting on the eggs when Little Ace goes for a little walk.  I had to run and get my camera when I saw Cracker in the nest with Little Ace.  Surely tomorrow we will have a couple of chicks.

It Takes a Coop to Raise Chicks

Patriots Day at First Baptist.  Trinity was honored for his service.

We all know Hillary Clinton's book, It Takes a Village.  Life always goes better for adults and children to have loving, caring, and helpful people around them.  That is one of the main reasons I practically moved heaven and earth so my first daughter, Bridget, would live just one house from me and raise my beautiful grandchildren right in my line of sight.  It is true, that I can sit on the sofa in the living room and watch TV and keep an eye on her house.  Many nights I have seen something that sent me flying out the front door to check things out.  Not to be confessing that I sit on the sofa all the time watching TV.  There are windows in 6 rooms from which I can observe "the little family's house."  And yes, I often refer to them as "the little family."
Thank goodness, for my sake, I have never encountered something that I couldn't handle.  But they know that I am right down the street ready to be called into action.

Well, my idea for this blog was not to write about "the little family."  As the title would suggest, this post is about something going on in one of the chicken coops.  If you read the previous post about Little Ace, you know she is endeavoring to hatch 7 eggs.  This is very hard on a hen.  The eggs have to be kept warm 24 hours for 21 days.  She would have to sit for 21 days, only if, all the eggs started on the same day.  That is not true with these eggs.  I figure there could be a 5 day span.  But since this process started before I understood what was going on, I really don't know the hatching date.  Little Ace started brooding April 15, but someone pecked holes in 2 eggs, so I don't know if there will be one hatching tomorrow or not.  But it is Friday, so "the little family" and I will take flashlights out again tomorrow night and while Little Ace is asleep, we will look inside the eggs.  But hopefully, there will be at least one little peeping chick.  I've already gone out twice today and put my ear to the nesting box to listen for peeps.  I guess I'm just practicing.

Back to what a tough process this is on Little Ace.  When does she eat, drink or go to the bathroom?  Actually, I put food and water right up next to her.  But yesterday, I decided to open the door to the coop and let Cracker out.  Cracker is the only hen that I let stay in that coop with Little Ace.  The other 3 hens and Mr. Rooster are living in the other coop.  Much to my surprise, Cracker and Little Ace hopped out.  That's okay, I read that sometimes the hen will leave the nest for just a minute to take care of her needs.  So I went back into the house. 

Cracker was just posing for the picture.  I lost the real one.

 After about an hour and a half, I went back out to the coup and was shocked to see Little Ace wandering around and scratching in the dirt, like she didn't have 7 eggs to keep warm.  But then I noticed that Cracker wasn't out.  I looked in the nesting box and there was Cracker egg-sitting. Of course, when I looked in, Little Ace went back in to her nest. 

Little Ace has her feathers ruffled.  I'm annoying her.

  She doesn't want me to think she is a bad mother.   They did the same thing today.  So we humans may not have invented  "Mother's Day Out."  Even hens are smart and caring enough to help each other out.  But of course that is sweet little Cracker.  Nasty Omelet would have been in there pecking holes in the eggs.  And to think 5 of the eggs are Omelet's.  None of them are Cracker's or Little Ace's.  Come to think of it, the concept of surrogate mothers may have originated from hens.  I'll keep you posted. In the next few days, we will have either chicks or rotten eggs.

Is There an Egg Stuck up her **@?

Little Ace sitting in a nesting box.

In the late afternoon of April 15th, I noticed that Little Ace had not laid an egg, but had been sitting in the nesting box all day.  She didn't come out to eat or drink.  I told Don there might be a problem with her.  The next day she did the same thing.  I read on the internet that sometimes an egg will get stuck in a hen and, of course, if it doesn't come out, she will die. I read that one could try and soak the hen in warm water, put mineral oil up inside of her, and stick your fingers inside her to try to remove the egg. I didn't sleep at all that night worrying about that sweet little hen.

Connor with young Little Ace

Omelet

Big Foot the Copper Maran

Remember Little Ace is Andrew Connor Edward's little chicken and he is still waiting for it to turn into a rooster, like Chase's chick did.  When we are talking about Little Ace, we say he instead of she.  Little Ace is lucky to be alive.  Omelet, the nasty Plymouth Barred Rock, tried to kill her when I moved the 3 new chicks to the chicken coop.  I went out to check on how they were getting along and found the back of Little Ace's neck was almost pecked in two.  Don told me that surely that chicken was going to die.  I put all 3 of the new chicks, they were about 8 weeks old, back into the dog crate that they had been in since they were one day old. I put an antibacterial ointment on Little Ace's wound. Well, obviously, Little Ace lived.  She is the nicest, friendliest little chicken.  She is a Copper Maran, like the rooster.

During my sleepless night, I read on the internet about hens brooding.  They stop laying eggs and sit on any eggs in the nesting box trying to hatch them. So the next morning, when Little Ace was still alive and not looking sick at all, but still sitting in the nesting box, I decided she was brooding. I moved all the other chickens into the old chicken coop and just left Little Ace and Cracker in the new coop, because some chicken (Omelet?) pecked holes in 2 eggs that Little Ace was sitting on.  Cracker is a nice chicken and grew up with Little Ace, so they are buds.

3 nights ago I read about how to hatch chicks with a brooding hen.  Of course I am starting 12 days into a 21 day process, so very little has been done right.  But the real question is, who knows how to hatch chicks best--a hen or a person?  We will see, because Little Ace is way ahead of me on this.

I read that about 15 days into the process, that I need to candle the eggs to be sure if the embryo is developing.  If it isn't, the egg will rot, then explode the rotten egg all over the other eggs, and smother the other embryos. Good grief.  Trinity said that he remembered in Charlotte's Web that the rat found a rotten egg and kept it.  It did eventually explode on him.  Bridget and I don't remember that part. I think that's a guy thing--exploding eggs :(  So tonight when Little Ace was asleep, all of us went out with bright flash lights and looked inside the eggs one by one.

I reached under the sleeping hen and removed each egg.  Trinity shined the light through each one to see if there was an embryo.  I then numbered them and put them back under Little Ace.  Right at the end, when I picked her up to see if I had missed any eggs, she gave me a gentle little peck.  Just a reminder that she was in charge of them.

The step that I did not know about until 3 days ago, was that I should have collected all the eggs and then put the eggs that I wanted to hatch under the brooding hen.  By doing that, they would all start developing at the same time and hatch in 21 days.  But I didn't know what was going on.  Remember I had been afraid that there was an egg stuck in her.  The blog I read said that it will be disastrous if they all progress several days apart.  So we are happily rolling along into a disaster.  What do hens do that don't have humans to collect the eggs so they can start at the same time?  Hopefully, all will end well and we will find out that animals can somehow survive and multiply without us.

None of them are my eggs?

 Anyway, Little Ace is sitting on 7 eggs. Five light brown ones that belong to nasty Omelet and 2 green ones that are New Sunny's, the Easter Chicken.  The original Sunny Side Up chicken died a few months ago. So all 7 eggs are half Copper Maran, because that's what the rooster is and half Barred Rock or Easter Chicken. None of them were laid by Little Ace, but she will be their mother.
Oops. We might not should say Mother. That means GIRL.

The dark brown eggs are Little Ace's.

 

After candling each egg, it appears that brown egg #5 will be the first to hatch. We could see a well defined chick embryo in it. It is very difficult to see through the shell of the green eggs, so we are not sure of anything with them yet. 

But something will happen in about 6 days; we are just not sure what.  I will keep you posted.