Rural Gardening: I'm on high alert !!!, 1 by jab91864

jab91864 wrote:
I called Ideal they are going to give me a credit. I'm now down 8 chicks. I saw a post on a poultry forum someone had gotten their Ideal order the same day as me and everyone was great then another somebody popped up and said his order came with everyone dead from Ideal, I guess they forgot to put in the warmer chicks. I truly think the wacky weather has a great deal to do with the chicks health on arrival and shipping is hard !! Out of 45 chicks I don't think 8 lost is excessive, I expected to have some loss it's just a bummer as we all know.

Crooked beak is gone and so is another of the Faverolle. I only got 4 of the Faverolle and have only 1 left now, I'm thinking perhaps a bad batch of that breed. I haven't read they are more "tender". The one left is doing ok, but easily gets run over by the "herd" when they all move at once. I did take it out and put it in a separate brooder yesterday but it peeped like mad even with a smaller friend and wouldn't snuggle.

The guinea keets and the silkie chicks are the same size (smallish) compared to everyone else but they are getting along great. I was sad to lose the blue cochin , I had only gotten 2 and had them sexed to boot...lol. Guess that means I will have to score some standard cochin eggs somewhere ;0)

On a very bright note some of my eggs (not many just a couple) are showing movement in the shell !!!!!!! I'm soooo happy not everyone died in the power outage !!! I culled the bulk of the eggs out last night and carried them off to the compost. Only the ones that showed absolutely no fertility, had shifted to just blood rings, had bubbles inside, or several had changed to black spots inside. Those all got pitched. Of course I am having difficulty on some of the very very dark green eggs, I guess I will have to wait it out a little longer.

None of the eggs were due to hatch until the 23rd and the 26th respectively. I have another batch of silkie and some frizzle eggs that both breeders were willing to hold off shipping until the weather straightened out along with my blue laced wyandottes and a small batch of runner duck eggs I thought I wanted to try....lol. I did place a low bid on some gold laced wyandotte and some blue orpington eggs at eggbid, so we will see what happens with those if I win or not.

Oh and before I forget here are some more pics I took this morning after I changed the chicks rubber mat. That thing sure makes things easy !!!!

~Julie =0)