New Baby

I had 6 Buff Pekin eggs in my incubator due last Wednesday (17.9.08). Unfortunately I was taken ill and had to be rushed into Hospital early Friday morning (2am) with a suspected heart attack. Very very scarey.

Thankfully it wasn't a heart attack, but I had shingles and it was the pain from that. I was kept in for a day while they did different tests, and my brother called into my house to turn the lights off. Sadly he turned the lights off at the socket, which my incubator extension lead was also plugged into. Needless to say when I got home late Friday afternoon the eggs were stone cold. One had pipped and I could see a tiny beak through the hole, so I switched the incubator back on, held the egg in my hands to warm it through, as the chick was still alive, and when the temperature had risen in the incubator popped the egg back inside for a few moments. It was obvious after a few minutes the chick was too weak to hatch under it's own steam, so I took the egg out and proceeded to peel the shell and membrane away so the chick could hatch. Luckily it did and is now a healthy bouncing baby girl Buff Pekin.

I kept her on her own for 24hrs in the incubator then put her in the brooder with the 3 other babies from previous hatches, the oldest being 2 wks and the millefleur twins who are a week old. One of which is the wobbly legged one that had to be hobbled. She's now walking and running around normally with 2 nice straight legs.

The new baby settled in with them as if they'd always been together, and the 2 week old Silver Partridge pekin acts like mother to the others. It's very cute to see.

So if you have a power cut or lose power to the incubator at all don't give up on the eggs. These eggs had been cold for about 8hrs, and the chick survived. Sadly the other eggs were no good as they hadn't even pipped so had died in the shell.

I've been lucky in a way, as the last 3 hatches have all been girls. But the number of hatched chicks to the number of eggs set has been abysmal this year. I think mainly due to the weather being so wet and cold, and then hot and sunny. The parent birds probably weren't as fertile or as strong as they could have been maybe. All my eggs this year were bought in to hatch and not from my own birds, so it's hard to say.