The Suprise Chicks

      Three weeks ago we gathered eighteen of the best looking eggs and put them in the incubator thinking that if we were lucky we might get nine to hatch and probably half of them would be roosters, so we might get about five hens.

  Five days in the power went out for four hours and the temperature in the incubator dropped to 82 F. A few days after that the power went out for a couple of hours. And the Monday before last the power went out again, this time for two hours. I was sure the eggs wouldn't hatch, but I kept turning the eggs every day just in case.

   Last Thursday I started hearing chipping from the eggs. And thought, 'Wow, we might get a couple of chicks out of this after all.' 
   The first chick hatched on Saturday, two more hatched a little before midnight that night, and by midnight Sunday fourteen chicks had hatched. Seven black with cream markings (including two with Barred Plymouth Rock white head spots), two yellowish red, two yellow with brown and black racing stripes and leopard print heads, and three pure blooded Ameraucana mahogany chicks.  Most of the chicks have those cute little Ameraucana cheek tufts. Neither one of us can really believe so many hatched.

   For some reason after most of the eggs hatched the incubator got too humid for the chicks to dry in the incubator. The first three chicks to hatch who had started to dry ended up getting wet all over again. Not really knowing what to do after the 24 hour mark for the oldest chick we started taking the chicks out of the incubator and putting them in this dish in the cage right under the heat lamp. Our thinking being that the dish would be extra protection from drafts and that the chicks could eat the food in the dish while they dried. Apparently we should have taken the dish out sooner or not put it in at all, because last night we found one of the little black and cream chicks died in it. Mom and I think it got squished by the other chicks jumping in to 'dog pile'. We had a funeral for it this afternoon.

   Now we're probably going to line the bathtub with newspaper and let them run around in that because that cage is so not big enough.

      Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day!