This is technical stuff, so it will only interest people prone to enjoying eating.
I have been experimenting with a microwave I converted into a poultry incubator............no you have to rip out the microwave and replace it with either a light bulb or heating cable, blah, blah, blah, as I have noted here in the archives.
What the problem is not counting one's chickens before they hatch.
I have a breed I have been working on developing and several endangered breeds I obtained, which in reality are about as viable a that gal Ted Kennedy had drown off that bridge.
It is a sad thing to have chicks die in eggs due to weakness, and it is really disheartening to see these exotics worth a fortune showing up with 60% egg non hatch.
Out of 19 eggs I had 13 not even start, 5 hatched, and one died in the egg as it started to pick.
If I were Mark Levin in those odds, I guess I wouldn't be working for 14 weeks in mourning over my pets. As I say, some people have the ease of life to take off, the rest take to work out of necessity.
I find work is wonderful therapy to take one's mind off of the hurts, and it does bother one seeing dead things........dead because the world just does not have the numbers of poultry necessary to do things right.
The chickens are from Spain in Penedesenca, Marans and Dorkings from France.
The technical part in this is how to birth baby chicks intent on dying before becoming alive.
I have left chicks in eggs to hatch which died, and I have taken chicks out of eggs and they died. It might sound like roulette and it is quite Russian, but the best results I have had are putting the eggs into simple egg cartons in a gas oven with a pilot light, and the door opened a crack to keep them in that 100 degree range for heat.
When a chick picks an egg with it's egg tooth, I give it the opportunity to circle the egg from the inside, in capping it, so it can pop the top off and jump out.
My observations are this is important as the chick turning in the egg cuts the blood veins which connect it to the inside membrane of the egg........eggs have two membranes in the one you are aware of in being that leathery thing, and a soft inner skin inside of that which is the womb the chick grows in.
The process I use is to if after a few hours the chick is not making progress I begin helping in flicking off pieces of egg where the chick started, going in a circle.
You have to be EXTREMELY careful in this, as if you start pulling too hard you will break the inner womb and you will have drops of blood appearing, making you quite sick to your stomach........do too much of that and you kill the baby.
Chicks take in the yolk of the egg before they are born to feed them for a few days after they arrive in the world, and this movement in the egg it appears detaches the chick from it's womb along with circling in the egg to peck itself out.
Once you get the egg shell off, you can just leave the chick in the warmth again to see if it will do the job it is supposed to do. Mine do not, so I start moving some of the outer membrane back from the head, which is always tucked under their little wing.
Oddest thing, but it works, in that a baby chicken always has it's head tucked under it's wing as it pecks at the shell to escape.
When it is an emergency situation, I start pealing a small opening in the outer membrane around the head and wing area. The chick will chirp loudly if you are doing things wrong, so stop.......if you got blood running, STOP, as the egg skin will stop the bleeding.
Gram and the old folks back in the day before band aides used to use that inner skin next to the egg shell and not yolk as a way to stop bleeding, as it was a bandage which self stuck.
Learned something medical now didn't you.
What you want is half the shell off that egg, and once you get a quarter size hole in that membrane, you stop opening it, so there is no need to tear things any more for bleeding.
Now just like birthing a mammal baby, you begin pushing that membrane gently as it will stretch and once you get it to the "shoulders" you should be able to very gently slide the head out from under the wing.
Stop now and do not remove the chick as there is an attachment on the back end of the chick still to the egg, and there will be heaps of blood and death most likely if you continue.
Pay attention as you sit the egg back down on some paper towels that you have the chick right side up, as if you have it on it's back it will probably die.......definitely make this sick one struggle more than it needs, so just pay attention as you will be surprised upon looking which end is back side up, as the first few times you would think it is opposite.
I try and dip the beak in a vitamin electrolyte solution with water at this point, as it is really important to keep the baby hydrated and get some nutrition into it.
I leave the chic for an hour at least to see what it will do. It will let you know what it's abilities are. I will help after an hour or so in chipping off the rest of that egg shell, and just leaving the membrane on the chick.
As long as it does not dry out, most chicks will get loose to the point of having just a little thread attachment left to the egg, which in turn will make the chick scream if you do anything but pinch it off and NOT PULL IT LOOSE FROM THE CHICK.........no bleeding remember.
If not loose, just keep working that membrane back and be patient, as the chick in most cases will look more dead than alive.......but be patient in if it is still breathing, just keep it's head up some and not smothered under the other little rioters you are birthing.
I believe that other sickly chicks doing what they do, along with body heat and sound from them, stimulate and help this sickly child respond better to trying to live.
Once free, you will notice this chick is not ready for prime time. The five I have look like roadkill at the moment, but just water them without drowning them every four hours or so during the day, and you will notice they will start perking up as mine have.
They will tell you loudly if they are too warm, cold, or hungry........all that baby stuff.
I just keep mine in a little box with paper towels in it, on top of the range I keep for this, as it has a pilot light which keeps them warm the first few days.
I sprinkle about a heaping teaspoon of non medicated chick starter and let them pick on things, and usually by 18 hours they will at least look like a crippled chicken, and by the second day these have started moving, and by the third you think they really are chickens which will live.
At two weeks, I have not seen one bit of difference in these weaklings now, as they are as lively as the others.
I know though that it is not what I'm about, as the reality is the hens I have sat with these eggs, I got one from both. The rest were sickly that died under them or were rotten.
It should be stated that, while I do have these crossed for more vigor as there are probably in some of these breeds only a few hundred scattered about North America, as these are very rare breeds, it did not help them hatch.
I had one little Krainekoppe (Dutch) hen which hatched 8 little sprightly chicks on her own, as I thought for sure the pile of eggs she had, and was late..........that stud cat I shot ran her off the nest, that nothing would come of it.
She did well though thank God, and after scratching me, pecking me and being a problem Mum, she is now not trying to kill me as I feed and water them.
That is though an exclusive in Cesarean Egg Hatching in how to obtain the best results. I used to in days past not bother with those little cripples as they all died. My rate now is over 90% once I get them out of the egg, which when one is dealing with little chirping things that no money can replace them.......is pretty good compared to dead ones.
What must be kept in mind as I digressed in what needed to be stated is, "You should keep the chicks which hatch out on their own marked or in a group by themselves, as these cripples are probably not gene pool stuff.........although they probably will make nice egg layers, and who knows if the bio diversity will make their chicks sprightly, but just like in any animals, you keep the one's you do not have to touch, as they are always your best breeding stock.
I know I have seen too much death in life and like Unforgiven I'm no rootin' tootin' son of a bitch cold blooded assassin like Will, and it does not help when my turkey poults talk to me and follow me around like a litter of children.
I get disappointed already, even in knowing I have to eat, in noting this last hatch seems to be mostly roosters, by comb size, that I will have to butcher them as that is the way the payment schedule is.......they die so I live so their flock members can live.
Does make it more intimate when one is birthing them too, but in world where mother's eat babies and babies eat dogs.........my caring about poultry and anything else seems out of place.
This should though help increase if you choose your flock numbers at least for the freezer in these coming survival times.
Of course, I wouldn't have to be doing any of this if American agriculture had not pissed all of this up in ruining numerous breeds.
What else though I have to do though eh, but teach a new generation of children how not to starve by raising the almost dead.
agtG
PS: Why these chickens in the most part are of interest to most is they lay an almost black egg in the early laying season.
Odd that I found old eggs actually slough off this deep color like they were painted. I noted also that some eggs had paint splatter work on them in round patterns, so it means these hens in their coloring process of the egg placing an overcoat on the eggs and the color is produced in round droplets.
...........and I didn't even have to crawl up there to find all this out.
