Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Too Many Deaths

I have had 4 burials in the last 3 days, 5 if I include T's cat.
One Silkie youngster and 2 of my Broody Box chooks died within days of each other. No idea why the Silkie died, maybe the heat, maybe it got too wet when I had sprinklers on because of the heat... Dunno.
The other 2 were from my Broody Box chooks that I hatched out months ago. I shifted them into a pen out behind the shed as 2 were roosters and we needed to get them further away from the house. They had been in the pen for a few weeks when I went out one morning and 2 had got themselves stuck and died. The sad thing is that the ones that died were hens and I still have 2 bleedin' roosters out there. The remaining hen had to be removed as the roosters must have been fighting over her and I found her in a different pen stuck between the water container and the door. She looked dead too but luckily wasn't so now I need to introduce her to the pen of Mixed Breeds.
The other death was so sad.
I had 2 clucky chooks in the MB pen and went out on Sunday to find that they had hatched out 2 chickens. Both hens were clucky and when the eggs hatched they both got off the nest to be *Mum*. I left the remaining 2 eggs on the nest to see if they would go back but by Monday afternoon they hadn't so I removed the eggs.
Now we sometimes crack the old eggs to see if they were fertile or not so I did that with these eggs. But...On cracking the first one some shell came off, membrane stayed intact, but we could see that the chicken in there was still alive! After more than 24 hours with no chook sitting on it.
Bloody thing. Now what do you do. Bury it alive or what?
T was with me and after I finished freaking out she suggested we try and hatch it. So we put in in an electric frypan and I thought that by morning it would be dead and then I'd bury it. Tuesday morning I get up and it was still alive. I had to go out all day and T was here at 5 when I got home so we went and checked and there was a tiny chicken, still wet so not long hatched. Now we had to make a brooder box for it.
Found a cardboard box and a light but by the time I had the temperature right the poor little thing had died in the frypan. Maybe that was too hot for it, I don't know.

So too many deaths but I am sure there will be more. That's a part of chook keeping I guess.

1 comment:

  1. Oh that is sad on the loss of the chooks, I hope the baby hatchling has a better chance of survival!

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