And then, there was One

Another hatching attempt down the drain.  Out of twenty-nine eggs I originally put into the incubator, twenty were viable.  From the twenty, seventeen hatched.  Of the seventeen live hatches, two had deformities in their legs and had to be put down. 

Of the fifteen chicks left, I now have one lonely survivor.  It’s been unbelievably hot and humid here the past week.  It was 105.4 on Saturday and over 100 degrees every day since; the humidity is beyond insane.  I had put the chicks in the barn on Friday with their feed & water.  By Sunday morning, seven of the chicks had died.  Then this morning I found another six had bit the dust.  One was missing (probably managed to squeeze through the cage) and the lone chick was peeping by him/herself.

I suppose I should have kept them in the house and set up a brooder for them in the basement, but after having raised a flock of chicks in the house before, I swore we’d never do it again.  It was just so incredibly messy.

So my theory of having chicks hatch in the summer so they wouldn’t need a heat lamp on them 24/7 turned out to be a fatal flop.  It was just too hot for them.  And now I feel like crap that I let fifteen baby chicks basically cook to death. 

I’m going to try incubating again, although I’ll wait a few more weeks before I start saving eggs in hopes that the weather will eventually become cooler.  Or at least not Suicidal Squirrel Hot.