Ok, I will admit it. I love having baby animals. So...it started with the ducks, then I found some Toulouse geese at a new feed store, then just before Easter, some of the eggs my chickens had been sitting on started to hatch...and now I have 30 eggs in the incubator! We have 8 baby chicks that hatched out of our eggs, that our hens sat on...then I passed by the baby chicks at Tractor Supply and they talked me into taking 6 home with me at a discount. Well, hey...they wanted me to take all of the chicks in one bin for half price, so I got out light with just the 6.
I really am going to have to come up with a plan for a chicken coop, the 14 baby chicks will only be about 4 weeks old when the eggs in the incubator start hatching. I did make a double decker brooder box, but I can tell right now that many chicks are not going to fit in it for very long. The ducks and geese grew so fast, I had to make a pen for them pretty quickly too. I got a 368 gallon cattle tank for them to swim in, but that won't get filled until we move it to it's permanent area.
We had a tradgety occur too...my favorite hen Ms Poofy Face died suddenly. I am happy that one of her eggs hatched and it looks like her offspring may have a poofy face too! It is a cross between an Easter Egger and a Rhode Island Red and at the moment looks more like a Rhode Island Red. Maybe, just maybe she passed the blue egg laying gene onto her baby. My Rooster, Mr. Poofy Face...the one I loaned to a neighbor was brought back to me in rough shape. He was attacked by another Rooster and had a good cut on his comb and would not open his eyes, eat or drink for days. I forced vitamins, electrolytes, antibiotics and VetRx down him and he has made almost a full recovery. He still will not open one eye, but that doesn't stop him from doing what roosters do.
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