Baby Chicks
We had a Golden Laced Wyandote Hen decide to sit on a clutch of eggs. Our first time as small hobby farmers to experience hatching eggs. We've not incubated or participated in "Hatch-a-longs" as it is called with a Hen doing all the work.
This was a trial and error situation. Lots of questions asked.
1. Do we let her hatch in the chicken coop with the rest of the flock? Our final result: No. She would get off her eggs to get water and food and another bird would take her place. Not a good thing to not know which eggs were beginning to develop and which were newly lain.
We did bring over another small chicken coop we had and placed her and her clutch inside. However, we didn't know how far along the eggs were so we knew we would have a staggered hatch rate. Not something that is recommended. Once those first eggs hatch, those baby birds need their mama off the nest. So she gladly gets off her nest and abandons the rest of the developing eggs. This is what happened to us. What to do? Should we buy an incubator? Should we let nature take it's course?
We ended up letting nature happen and not try to figure things out. Even when we "candled" the eggs (you place a flashlight up to them in the dark and you can see the embryo developing) we couldn't tell exactly how far along they were.
So the results? We had 14 eggs under her. 6 hatched. 3 survived the hatch and 3 died. Each chick was born a day apart from each other. I think one was stepped on during the hatch process because it lived for a day in our bathroom. But the shell was crushed on it and it hadn't fully absorbed it's yoke sack (the yoke is it's food supply, we didn't know that until recently)
Newly hatched chick - she lived too! Their bellies are that big because they have fully absorbed their yoke sack and can go without food or water for up to two days!
Same baby chick, just hours later.
This was a trial and error situation. Lots of questions asked.
1. Do we let her hatch in the chicken coop with the rest of the flock? Our final result: No. She would get off her eggs to get water and food and another bird would take her place. Not a good thing to not know which eggs were beginning to develop and which were newly lain.
We did bring over another small chicken coop we had and placed her and her clutch inside. However, we didn't know how far along the eggs were so we knew we would have a staggered hatch rate. Not something that is recommended. Once those first eggs hatch, those baby birds need their mama off the nest. So she gladly gets off her nest and abandons the rest of the developing eggs. This is what happened to us. What to do? Should we buy an incubator? Should we let nature take it's course?
We ended up letting nature happen and not try to figure things out. Even when we "candled" the eggs (you place a flashlight up to them in the dark and you can see the embryo developing) we couldn't tell exactly how far along they were.
So the results? We had 14 eggs under her. 6 hatched. 3 survived the hatch and 3 died. Each chick was born a day apart from each other. I think one was stepped on during the hatch process because it lived for a day in our bathroom. But the shell was crushed on it and it hadn't fully absorbed it's yoke sack (the yoke is it's food supply, we didn't know that until recently)
Newly hatched chick - she lived too! Their bellies are that big because they have fully absorbed their yoke sack and can go without food or water for up to two days!
Same baby chick, just hours later.
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