I wanted a happy ending......................

But it didn't end that way.  It's been a crazy, bummer kind of a week.  

First off, I got kind of worried that the eggs I slipped under Little shit weren't going to hatch. I did the float test and the eggs floated, but they didn't move much in the water. I knew then that there was around a 50/50 chance that the egg (btw I say egg because somehow the other one ended up a dud and wasn't fertilized) was still viable and would hatch at that point. Because its been so hot (103-105 daily) my thoughts were less hopeful, leaning more to the 50% failure rate. Incubated eggs do best with 40-50% humidity and a 99.5-100 degree temperature range from what I've been reading. I started to worry. 

On Saturday, I decided that I wanted to try to slip two chicks under Little shit so she could mother them and hopefully break her broody behavior, just in case the egg didn't hatch. This is a technique that is used with success many times. In theory, the mother thinks she hatches the chicks and immediately switches to mother mode. Saturday morning I headed to the feed store, it was National Cowboy Day there that day, to buy two chicks. They had an excellent selection and I ended up picking out a Light Brahma and a Salmon Favorelle, both two days old. The man in the chick room, who I happen to chat up frequently really wanted to give me a chick because of my "valued customer" status. Love those boys at the feedstore.  So, I ended up taking home three. I told myself and Claire that I would only get two while I was there, but was secretly happy I had an excuse to bring home three. He gave me a beautiful little Ancona on the house. YeeeeHawww.


Saturday Night at around 10:00 pm we headed out to slip the new girls under their sleeping, waiting mother. Little shit fussed a little but settled back down after the little ones were slipped under. As I strategically placed the two under, I took out two eggs. We left her alone and after about an hour, I went back to check on her. The girls and their independent spirits had jumped out of the nesting box. I put them back in and they settled in nicely. I reluctantly went back to bed and hoped for the best in the am. I wanted to watch them all night. 


Unfortunately, sometimes this technique does not work and in this case it did not. When I checked on them at sun up, the little Ancona had been killed and the other two were hiding in a crack were the big girls couldn't get to them. I was devastated. I couldn't believe it didn't work. I worry now, big time that I didn't check on them enough and I wish I would have gone at sunrise to make sure she would not kill them. I honestly thought she would take them as her own. Ugh. I regret doing it for the sake of that little one. I talked to some people from the poultry forum and was reassured I did everything ok. It's just sometimes some chickens, even though they are broody, don't want to be a mother. She obviously doesn't.  Much to the dismay of Claire, we now have two little chicks brooding in the laundry room again. We will have to raise them and integrate them with the flock later.  They still don't have names, so if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears. 


Ya'll are probably wondering what ever happened to the fertilized egg? The answer to that is another big let down. I did the float test again this morning and no movement. I made the decision to crack the egg open and see what was in it.  Little shit had done her job of setting well.  I'm pretty sure the heat was working against her because inside was a dead fully formed little chick. Ugh. Seriously. 

So now I have to figure out a way to break little shit. Surprisingly, today she was out and about with the rest of the crew. I noticed she made a beeline to the coop a few times, but for the most part she hung with the other girls. I think taking away that one little egg and 30+ days may have finally snapped her out of it. 


I hate that a month later Little shit wasn't able to become a mother (even though in reality she didn't really want to be) and that this situation wasn't able to have a different ending but at least I ended up with two things that make me smile............................

Once again, chicks are really hard to photograph. These are the best I could get

Wanna see something cute?

I was thinking about the eggs I slipped under Little Shit. I stole one of the eggs (the little Bantam one) from a hen that is also broody and setting on a mound of eggs at my dads house. She had started sitting on them 2 days before I took one, so I realized that they were due to hatch on the 20th or 21st since Little Shit's are supposed to hatch on Sunday. So I called my Dad that morning and talked to his friend Ms. Freida who takes care of the animals and she said none had hatched yet. I told her to call me as soon as they started to hatch, knowing my calculations couldn't have been wrong. 

At 4:00 yesterday, my phone rang and it was Ms. Freida. She said she had just checked on the hen and she saw a broken egg. Concerned that a snake had gotten the eggs, Ms. Freida was looking around when she heard the faint sounds of sweet little chirps. She lifted up Red(the hen's name) and there they were. Three sweet little chicks. She didn't want to disturb them too much but she was able to get a few pics and send them to me. Hopefully Little shit will hatch hers in the next few days. 

Blurry but still cute

It's a St. Supery and Chicken Candling Kind of Night

I know I know. I have been gone awhile. This heat we have been experiencing makes me wanna shrivel up and do nothing. The garden............ gone. I stopped watering it a few weeks ago. Austin is in the middle of a serious drought and I'm doing my best to conserve H2O. My hope is that the fall garden will be a tad more successful than what I had going on the past couple of months. Yooooooowser.


So today is day 14 of Little Shit setting on the eggs. If the way she guards those eggs says anything about the kind of mother she is going to be, this feisty lady is going to win Mama of the year, no doubt. She puffs up, ruffles her feathers, and totally gets annoyed when you mess with her to get the rest of the eggs, but surprisingly she has yet to peck me. Sweet girl.


Anyway, I was starting to wonder if there really was anything brewing in the two eggs that I snuck under her on July 4th. I wasn't quite sure how to tell. I was just being patient, waiting for day 20 to see if anything hatched. So I did a little google search and who knew there was such a thing as chicken candling.  I didn't.  I read up about it and tonight I grabbed my flashlight(not the fancy set up provided on the previous link) and headed out as soon as it got dark.


Huh.


I am not quite sure what the hell I was looking at when I shined that light on the eggs. Granted, I did have a couple glasses of the Supery before heading out, but all I saw in my eggs was a black blob. This could be normal at Day 14, or it could mean that it's just a rotten egg in there. Some people say that if they aren't growing chicks, they will smell rotten. Well, they didn't smell. I sat there smelling them like I was sitting in the middle of a rose garden. They smelled fine. So, my optimistic self is remaining hopeful that these eggs will hatch in 6 days.


If not, I have plan B(no, not that kind you crazy kids) up my sleeve. My plan is to get some day old chicks from the feed store and slip them under her. She will never know the difference and she has definitely earned the deserving title of mother in these past three weeks.

9 eggs and two golf balls later...........

I thought I had broken Little Shit(L.S.). 


I picked her up, booted her out of the coop, and closed it up for the whole day.  Every so often, I would see her scurry across the yard trying to get back to the now empty nest, only to be met by a locked door. She would fly up onto the roof,  looking for a way in. I have never seen or would ever believe she could fly that high. Don't mess with a lady on a mission is all I'm saying.....yowser. That night, she roosted with the rest of the girls. 


The next day she seemed great. Hanging around outside of the nesting box, eating, and drinking. I thought to myself, "well that was easy enough. No big deal." I thought breaking a broody hen would be ten times harder according to what I have been reading. She wasn't laying but I thought she just needed a few days to regroup and then she would be good as new. 


I went out of town to my Dad's in Louisiana for the fourth of July weekend. When I got back after three days I never guessed she would be broody again. There she was again, as happy as can be sitting on the eggs the girls laid over the weekend. Alright, maybe I got a little cocky with my skills. I thought I had fixed her easily. 

Over the weekend, I got to hang out with Henry and Sonny (the two roosters I brought to Dad's). They are huge and beautiful now, but seriously they crow all day. I had an idea to bring a few fertilized eggs of my dads home, just in case L.S. was still broody. I thought it would be cool if she could hatch eggs that they were fertilized by my Henry or Sonny. I was originally going to bring home 3 big eggs and one bantam egg( a miniature hen) but my brother made some killer Margaritas for the fourth and dammit, I dropped two of the big ones as I was headed out. There were only 4 eggs that day, so I ended up only bringing home one big egg and one bantam egg......and a headache. Thanks bro. 


When I got home, I slipped them under her and she hasn't moved since. I am hoping at least one of them hatches for her so she can be a mother. And if the one that hatches happens to turn out to be a hen rather than another rooster, that would be even better. We will see what happens in a few weeks. 


On another note, I found out that that the Tater tot loves to go fishing. I left him on the shore and he swam about two hundred yards to get to the kayak to go fishing with me. Stinker