Saturday, February 19, 2011

Helping the 1st Leghorn Hatch - Sunday 2-13-11

I'm back after a brief hiatus.  Just been so busy and haven't found time to update until now.

On Sunday we realized the 1st white egg with the leghorn chicken was having a problem hatching.  So against sound advice, I decided to help it hatch.  Some of the pictures I will post look kinda gross and bloody.  They look bloody because you can see the chickens pink skin through the egg membrane and it looks red when the membrane is wet.

Happy to say though, this one hatched successfully and needed very little help afterwards.  It is now thriving on it's own and it is a bit aggressive, just like it's mother.

In the image below, I have removed some of the eggshell and of the membrane. You have to be SO CAREFUL when doing this.



This next picture show the shell completely removed and the membrane is wet where you see the red.


This next picture is right after the chick is born.  You can see some blood and some feces which I did clean from him.  The chick is exhausted.



Here is the chick a bit later after getting some rest, food, and water.


Here is yet another picture.


So this little guy made it.  I tried to help two other chicks out of their eggs.  I hatched them, they had pipped but had gone no further. I removed their shells and helped them out.  They were so frail.  I fed them food/water but they did not make it through the night.  So not all do well when you help them out. I'm not posting pics of those chicks for obvious reasons.

After we got done hatching the 1st leghorn we saw a 2nd leghorn egg had been pipped. Wow!  We are excited about this!

Check back for more updates.

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