In addition to having fun getting reacquainted with Paisley Noon and all the characters from Nokota Voices as I continue to work on the second Forever Fields book...
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It's time for another...
Sister Chicks Adventure!
I am trying to raise my own chickens again this spring. With the price of eggs so high, and my flock dwindling a bit after the weird winter, I figured it was time. So out came the big and clunky Fleet Farm incubator and the various Rubbermaid totes full of all things CHICKS.
I had a rather dismal outcome this first time around. Only two out of ten eggs hatched. Several were not fertilized in the first place. That's not on me. That's on Sherriff Andy, my rooster. Spring has not completely sprung for him, perhaps. Then a few eggs just up and quit by the second candling on day 14 (of 21). The super technical term for these is "Quitters". So I had high hopes for the remaining four. Two dark chocolate brown eggs, and two lovely pale blue ones.
After much fretting over whether I had the humidity right, and the temperature right, and the candling right, "labor day" came and went. No chicks. Where did I go wrong? Immediately, I believed they all perished at my hand! I could just cry.
My husband said, "You can't take it so hard. It's just nature."
I said to him, "This," and I waved my over-emphatic, over-emotional hands at the Styrofoam box with wires and heat elements and water channels, "is not nature." I drew in a quivering breath. "This is me pretending I'm nature." I let out said breath and finished with, "I don't know if I'm cut out for this. How does a mother hen do it?!"
But he talked me into not giving up just yet. So I re-read EVERYTHING I'd already read and studied several times over! I woke up in the middle of the night to Google questions I hadn't yet thought of. I must have missed something, right? As you can imagine, the internet is littered with a thousand different opinions and a plethora of advice, and of course, most of them contradict each other.
In the end, all I could do was wait. On day 23 (not day 21 like the books say), the two dark ones hatched! The first one cheered the second one on as she worked her special hatching muscles to break free of her shell. I guess they didn't read the books. Now, these little sister chicks have each other. They are so stinkin' cute, I can hardly stand it. I can't wait to see what funny, sweet, or oddball personalities they develop as they grow and become part of the flock. Their adventure has just begun!
I'm sad to say the two light blue ones didn't make it, so I think I will try again in a few weeks. I counted it out on the calendar and found that if I start a new batch on Easter weekend, they should hatch on Mother's Day. Wouldn't that be neat!?
Enjoy Sister Chicks To The Rescue!, inspired by my own lil sister chicks.
Click on the book cover below to go to StoryJumper.com.
Good luck on trying for chicks again. Not being a farm girl I would never attempt to do this.
ReplyDeleteI had chickens in the backyard once. My husband built them a coop. We let the hens cover the eggs and nature took its course. Of course, I live in Arizona, where the weather is mild in winter and hot in summer. But we also had to deal with very smart coyotes. Soon we had more eggs than we could ever eat. We provided the neighborhood with free eggs for several years.
ReplyDeleteYes! I have several friends at school who bring me old bread and stale cereal in exchange for eggs. I love sharing with them. I've told them that selling eggs, I think, would take all the fun out of it.
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