Monday, July 25, 2011

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.

3 comments:

  1. Sorry you lost the chicks but your weather is insanely hot! We lost two hens before we started adding ice to their water and running the sprinkler in the afternoon on their little outside shade tree.

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  2. Don't beat yourself up, you're not a weather man! I found myself running to the coop in the middle of the night because a thunderstorm dropped the temp 25 degrees. I had to unplug the fan and plug in the brooder lamp! This weather is brutal! Best wishes for the next batch :)

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  3. gld, do the chickens like the sprinkler? Do they run in & out of it like little kids or do they just hang around the sprinkled area?

    hoosier girl, I was actually afraid that they would be too cold at night because it was in the upper 70's, but it was still too warm in the barn.

    Anybody want a single chick? (chicken, that is....I'm happily married!)

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