Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Bourbon Red Turkeys Week 9

3 of the turkeys ran off about a week ago. I have read stories on the internet of people's free range turkeys and how they will fly off for a week or two and then show back up. I'm hoping that mine will do the same this time but I think they probably got eaten as they were too young to fly very far. At least I have these 6.


Seeya

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Bourbon Red Turkeys Week 8 (2 Months Old)


Seeya

Picture post!!

So, the chicks hatched but not all of them. Only 5 out of the 19. I'm starting to collect eggs for the next try. This time I'm gonna try to keep the humidity around 25 and at hatch around 65. I really want to figure this out so that I can eventually have quail and keep a flock going. Also I want to breed, hatch and sell pure breed chickens.

I took some pics of the new chicks and also some of the older 3 that I hatched first.
But first some others from the past few days...
Laura and Joshua

Two days worth of rain
 So, here I should add that after only one more night we now have just over 3 inches.
It's mostly coming in hard short spurts.
Turkeys

The yellow chicks

Cogburn, the big guy out of the bantam cochin gang.

The silkie!!
 OK, ok, that was probably hard for you.
But good job waiting!
Now you get to see the new chicks!!

The one on the bottom is not doing very well. His belly is huge and his one foot is curled up.
Also, he can't walk(Age? Foot?) so he get's trampled by the other chicks and can't stay with them to keep warm.
I held him for several hours as I went about my day and he is much perkier but I'm still not sure if he'll survive. We'll see.

And these are the chicks that I hatched a while back. They are growing fast. I think the white and one of the blacks are girls and the other black is a boy.
OK, that's all the pics for now,

Seeya

Monday, June 20, 2016

Lockdown!!

Y'all probably don't know what that is. Well, some of you might. On the the details!!

So when incubating eggs you have to turn them. Right? Right. and we do this because if we don't then the yolk will stick to the side of the egg and you will get deformed chicks. That is if they survive. BUT, if you keep turning them all the way until the end of incubation then the chicks, who are trying to get in the right position to hatch, get moved all around through the egg and have to keep on readjusting themselves. This can wear the chick out and it will not have enough strength to break out and is trapped inside the shell, alive. And so to prevent this we have to stop turning them on about day 18(yesterday).

Humidity. Humidity is just a measurement of how wet the air is. 100% is the max(The air can't hold any more) and 0% is the lowest(No water in the air). So, everybody has their own opinions on what the humidity should be at each of the different stages of incubation. However one thing that everybody seams to agree on is that the humidity needs to be between 50% and 80% for when they're hatching. So the reason for this is because if the humidity is too low than the egg will more or less dry out and the membrane will shrink wrap the chick and it will be stuck inside the shell, alive. However, if the humidity is too high then the chick will drowned inside the egg. So, regardless of what humidity you decide on for most of the incubation, at lockdown you need to have it about this humidity.

Another thing that you need to do for lockdown is to, well, 'lock down'. Don't open the incubator for any reason at all. Because if a chick is just starting to pip(The first step to hatching) it is used to 99.7 degrees and if you open the lid all the heat escapes and it takes a while to warm back up and the chick may die from shock because of the change of temperature. So you need to leave the lid on.

Next you want to put paper towels inside the incubator all over the floor so that when the chicks hatch they don't have their feet going through the wires and/or(Depending on your incubator) so that they can have the traction that they need to move around and warm up.

So, I made all of these changes yesterday, Sunday, the 18th day of incubation. So they should be hatching on Wednesday but that depends on the incubation temperature. If the temp is slightly low then it might be another day but if it's a little high than it could be earlier. My temp throughout incubation has been just under the recommended 99.7 so they might be a little late.

So, I'l definitely do a picture post when they hatch which should be later this week. All of this information is just from what I have learned off of the internet in the past month of research. So, if anybody has any tips, tricks, or ideas please let me know in the comments.

Thanks for checkin' out my blog,

Seeya

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Another One Hatched!!!

This one is gonna be red and white.
I can tell because it has feathered feet (Only my light brahmas have feathered feet) and is red.
This si the color I was hoping for.
It will be interesting to see what it looks like as it grows up.

Anyway, y'all are probably tired of listening to me talk so

ON TO THE PICTURES!!






Seeya

Sunday, June 5, 2016

New Chick Pictures

I have tried hatching twice before. Once 1 out of 40 hatched. The second time 1 out of 17 hatched.
This time two did.
Talk about a better hatch rate!!
And I have one more that will hatch soon (or never :/) and two more that aren't due to hatch for a while yet.

Anyway, here's the pics...
Just starting to pip

getting bigger

starting to zip

most of the way around

almost ready

Jail break!!!!

Whew!! takin a nap

into a box
 At this point I wasn't sure how to arrange the light so that they could get away from it if need be but Laura, my sister, helped and got it all set up for me.

If I got a box too big it might get lost and/or not be able to find the light, food, or water.
Too small and the light would warm up the whole thing unless I put it super close and risked burning the box.
After explaining all this to Laura she just kinda set it up in the chicks always seem comfortable.
Very helpful! :)
The second one took all day to hatch

Whats that little gooey ball sprawled out in MY space!!!

Next morning. Oh it's a chicken just like me!!

Seeya

Friday, June 3, 2016

Turkey and Chick Pictures!!!

Zach, my 7 year old brother, took every one of these photos with my Nikon D40.

Here, they are...
My entire flock (Of Turkeys. I have waaayy more chickens:) )



You may notice something wrong with this turkeys feet. All of the turkeys have it. When they were in the brooder (Wire Floor) their feet bled often. I'm not sure why this was happening but after I moved them onto grass it cleared up. What you see is the remaining scabs and also some dirt.


The next few pictures are of my light brahma hen who is raising chicks for me. 6 bantam cochin buffs and one silkie. One of the cochins is darker, bigger, bigger comb, and better at keeping up with their 'Mom'. I think he's a rooster and the rest are pullets. If he is a rooster the name cogburn is designated.

Anyway look at the pictures and take a guess at gender on the dark one.







Seeya

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

The Eggs are In the Incubator!!

This being my first time if anyone has any comments or suggestions please comment as I don't want to mess this up.

So there's 19 of them and they were put in at 8:30 on June first (2016 in case you didn't know.;))

Anyway, 21 days from now I hope for lots of chicks.

We'll see.

Seeya