Ok, it was only in April that I let my hens hatch out some babies. Well, I once again have broody hens. Yep, Brown Racer is broody for the third time in a year! Ms McCluckinson is broody for the second time. I figured it would be a good time to buy hatching eggs of a couple of breeds I wanted and let them hatch the chicks. The other hens laid eggs in the nest boxes for a few days and I let them keep them while I searched for chocolate egg layers and blue egg layers from eBay.
I got the eggs in the mail about a week later but the blue eggs were damaged and I sent the seller a message telling them they needed to pack differently, the eggs were smashed from too tight of packing materials. I sent pictures. I pulled all of the eggs from my broody hens and put them in the incubator. I put half of both kinds of eggs under each broody hen...now it is just a matter of waiting 21 days! But, because of the packing problem the seller on eBay was sending replacement eggs!
In the mean time, two of my Dominique hens go broody too! Well, I only have 7 hens laying...when a hen goes broody and sits on eggs, they stop laying eggs. But because the seller was shipping replacements I was glad for one more broody. Well, until they started rotating nest boxes. When the other eggs came in I split them too. I only have four nest boxes though...when you have four broody hens and four nest boxes, you need more nest boxes for the other hens to lay their eggs in...or they will get in the nest box with the broody hens and lay. Then at one point it looked like I had six broody hens! The Dominique hens kicked Brown Racer out of her nest box so she climbed in with Ms McCluckinson. Then Ms McCluckinson climbed in with a Dominique. They all started stealing eggs! They would get into a nest box and roll one out and over to another, I guess 6 eggs each was not enough...so I left the eggs being laid in the nest boxes.
I think it was last Monday that I heard the first chick in the incubator...I had not done lockdown yet and the egg turner was still in the incubator...and a chick had hatched! I wasn't really ready for it, I thought I had a few more days. So I set up a brooder for it and took out the eggs and candled them. Took a few out that were not fertile, and put the rest on lockdown. I have had two eggs a day hatch all week. I am up to 16 babies now in the brooder.
Yesterday I went out to give the Momma hens sitting on the eggs some watermelon and grapes and saw an eggshell in the run. I decided to check under the hens to see if a chick had hatched...no chick found. Since I was down to three eggs in the incubator, I decided to confiscate all of the eggs from the hens and put them in the incubator to finish the hatch. It has been really hot out lately and the hens were not drinking enough water...I didn't want my hens to die, I took them all out of the nest boxes and put them outside. I closed the coop after I did that because brown racer ran back up and sat on the empty nest.
After the eggs sat in the incubator for a few hours I went and checked on them, two of them had bubbles coming out of them...trashed them before they exploded. I woke up this morning and one of my remaining three eggs had hatched. The ones I took away from the hens should start hatching tomorrow if the hens didn't damage them too badly.
Monday, July 14, 2014
Ouch
We got the new chicken coop framed, it took two weekends. My husband started taking off at 5 this past week and we worked on the coop when he got home from work. We put up the sheathing on the sides and I hauled materials using our lawn tractor to the job site. Well, until I hurt myself anyway.
The sheathing is a semi-structural board, we attached it to the outside walls of the chicken coop. I thought I would get the metal siding loaded and brought over to the coop and start putting it up on the bottom sections. The metal was in our Tuff Shed,kinda buried under the decking I had gotton for the roof. I had to move the roof decking one sheet at a time and stack them close to the door so I could put them back. I actually leaned the 4'x8' sheets against the door to keep it open while I got the metal siding out of the shed.
Everything was going great, I got the metal all loaded into the dump cart hooked up to the lawn tractor and started to move the decking back into the shed. Everything happened so fast that I am not quite sure how what happened next happened...but, as I started to move the first piece of decking the whole stack of 8 sheets decided to come forward onto me! Maybe the wind caught it? Maybe I didn't have them at a good angle against the door? Not sure...they fell forward toward me though, and knocked me back into the metal sitting in the cart. I hit my elbow on the metal and tryed to get out of the way of the falling wood before it fell completely. I pushed on it to keep it from sliding down my legs and lost my ballance, fell forward onto the doorframe and landed on my hip on the threshold of the door...that is when I noticed blood dripping down my arm and tried to get up. I grabbed my shirt at stuck it to my arm putting pressure on my elbow. I just left everything out and went to the house to inspect the damage to my arm.
My shirt had a nice big wet spot of blood, my glove was wet with it and I was a little afraid to look at the cut. I got a washcloth and proceeded to clean it up and continued the pressure on it while I looked for butterfly bandages, quick clot, gauze and antiseptic.
Then I decided to look at my elbow. I could tell I needed stitches, I hoped I could put two or three butterfly bandages on it and continue working. It had stopped bleeding, well...until I tried to put on the first butterfly bandage it had. When I put that on and pulled it to close the wound tighter, it kind of opened it up and blood squirted into the sink. I am thankful at this time that my Mom always used me as her assistant when putting on butterfly bandages on my siblings when I was a kid...also that I had boys who gave me the opportunity to see some injuries and know how a lot of blood would make me feel. Gross huh? At least I didn't faint or panic! But, I did dread calling my husband to come take me to the hospital for stitches.
I kept calm, called my husband...told him what happened, that it wasn't that bad...just in a bad spot. Have you ever had a bad cut on a joint? It moves a lot, I am very right handed and the cut is on my right elbow. I have too much to get done to let a little cut stop me. He said he was on his way, and I decided to try my doctors office and see if they could stitch me up before having him take me to the emergency room. My regular doctor couldn't, but another o e would be waiting for me to get there.
I ended up getting six stitches and a tetanus shot. I have about a 7 inch bruise on my left forearm and a very ugly black bruise on my left hip...yep, it hurt worse the second day...oh, it still hurts. My arm is swollen from the tetanus shot too. The shot also had the Whooping Cough vaccine in it and the past few days I have been coughing...why? Who knows? It may be allergies, either that or maybe the shot made me have it. I have to take antibiotics and the stitches have to stay in at least ten days to two weeks.
The sheathing is a semi-structural board, we attached it to the outside walls of the chicken coop. I thought I would get the metal siding loaded and brought over to the coop and start putting it up on the bottom sections. The metal was in our Tuff Shed,kinda buried under the decking I had gotton for the roof. I had to move the roof decking one sheet at a time and stack them close to the door so I could put them back. I actually leaned the 4'x8' sheets against the door to keep it open while I got the metal siding out of the shed.
Everything was going great, I got the metal all loaded into the dump cart hooked up to the lawn tractor and started to move the decking back into the shed. Everything happened so fast that I am not quite sure how what happened next happened...but, as I started to move the first piece of decking the whole stack of 8 sheets decided to come forward onto me! Maybe the wind caught it? Maybe I didn't have them at a good angle against the door? Not sure...they fell forward toward me though, and knocked me back into the metal sitting in the cart. I hit my elbow on the metal and tryed to get out of the way of the falling wood before it fell completely. I pushed on it to keep it from sliding down my legs and lost my ballance, fell forward onto the doorframe and landed on my hip on the threshold of the door...that is when I noticed blood dripping down my arm and tried to get up. I grabbed my shirt at stuck it to my arm putting pressure on my elbow. I just left everything out and went to the house to inspect the damage to my arm.
My shirt had a nice big wet spot of blood, my glove was wet with it and I was a little afraid to look at the cut. I got a washcloth and proceeded to clean it up and continued the pressure on it while I looked for butterfly bandages, quick clot, gauze and antiseptic.
Then I decided to look at my elbow. I could tell I needed stitches, I hoped I could put two or three butterfly bandages on it and continue working. It had stopped bleeding, well...until I tried to put on the first butterfly bandage it had. When I put that on and pulled it to close the wound tighter, it kind of opened it up and blood squirted into the sink. I am thankful at this time that my Mom always used me as her assistant when putting on butterfly bandages on my siblings when I was a kid...also that I had boys who gave me the opportunity to see some injuries and know how a lot of blood would make me feel. Gross huh? At least I didn't faint or panic! But, I did dread calling my husband to come take me to the hospital for stitches.
I kept calm, called my husband...told him what happened, that it wasn't that bad...just in a bad spot. Have you ever had a bad cut on a joint? It moves a lot, I am very right handed and the cut is on my right elbow. I have too much to get done to let a little cut stop me. He said he was on his way, and I decided to try my doctors office and see if they could stitch me up before having him take me to the emergency room. My regular doctor couldn't, but another o e would be waiting for me to get there.
I ended up getting six stitches and a tetanus shot. I have about a 7 inch bruise on my left forearm and a very ugly black bruise on my left hip...yep, it hurt worse the second day...oh, it still hurts. My arm is swollen from the tetanus shot too. The shot also had the Whooping Cough vaccine in it and the past few days I have been coughing...why? Who knows? It may be allergies, either that or maybe the shot made me have it. I have to take antibiotics and the stitches have to stay in at least ten days to two weeks.
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