eggs | KW Homestead

Tag: eggs (page 2 of 4)

Goose Nest!

March 11, 2015 / jason / Comments Off

We found a secret goose nest the other day, filled with 10 eggs!

The eggs were completely covered with leaves and partially buried in the pebbles and leaf mulch surrounding our front porch!

Goose nest right by the front porch!

The only reason that I noticed the nest at all was because China was laying in the leaves, totally flattened out as if she were dead. Since she’s usually very wiggly and noisy, I was surprised about how quiet and still she was! She didn’t move when I came close to her, and didn’t even blink. I watched to see if she was breathing, and I didn’t see any movement at all. I suppose she was holding her breath, but I was worried she was hurt (or worse)!

I even poked her with a stick and she refused to move.

I walked away to see if she would act normally once I left, and later I could see that her head was up and looking around. An hour later when I was back inside, I looked out the window to see her walking around the yard as usual.

That’s when I realized that she had to have been sitting on a nest! Geese will sometimes try to “lay low” by being still and quiet if they think danger approaches them and their nest.

When I checked out the nest I counted 8 eggs, and a day later there was 10!

Unfortunately the geese have not been sitting on them consistently (they trade off) so we don’t think they are viable eggs. But, we’ll see! Such an exciting springtime surprise, anyway!

First goose eggs of the year!

.:.

The Eggs are Back in Town!

February 2, 2015 / jason / Comments Off

This winter our flock of barred rock and buff orpington chickens experienced a significant drop-off in egg production. 1 egg days were common and 3 eggs in 1 day was a cause for celebration. This was due in part to the changing of the seasons, with the short and cold winter days translating to less egg production. This is pretty standard for chickens, but did not account entirely for our huge drop in eggs.

This winter, our chickens went through their first molt. Molting is when chickens lose all of their feathers and then regrow new ones. This takes a great deal of energy, and during the molt, chickens gradually stop laying only to pick back up after they have grown back all of their feathers. Chickens will go through their first molt at about 18 months, and then once every year after that.

So, for the past couple of months we were pretty low on eggs, and even had to stop selling to our loyal customers. However, the eggs are back in town! The chickens have come home to lay eggs again! We started getting 2-3 eggs everyday about 2 weeks ago, and now we are consistently getting 5 or 6 standards and an equal number of bantams everyday.

To me it feels like another sign that spring is actually coming and that soon the grass will be green, the clover will be blooming, and the trees will leaf out.

hatching chicken eggs: let nature take its course!

December 7, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

let me first start by saying that jason and i decided early on in the incubation process that chicken are chickens and we can’t be too worried about their growth and development as long as we were doing as much as we can to take care of them and protect them. sometimes incubated eggs die, and sometimes chicks die, and although it is sad, that is the cycle of life.

so as we began to incubate our 27 eggs, we were determined to do what was the best for the chicks when the time came: letting nature take its course. as with human babies, chicks know what time to emerge into the world and generally do a very good job of it once they’re ready (just like humans).

there is always variation in birth, both with humans and chicks, and i was reminded of this while i waited on many of the eggs to hatch. i thought… “this egg has pipped and then done nothing for 24 hours… what’s wrong?”

the answer was: nothing! nothing at all. the chicks were simply waiting to be ready to come into the world. sometimes this included absorbing all of the yolk sac into their abdomen (from which they are provided with enough nourishment for a few days and do not need food or water). other times it might mean that they are still absorbing all of their blood (that was once coursing through the vessels inside of the egg) so that they are born will all of their necessities!

when the chicks are born, they are flopping, gooey creatures that seem spastic and sleepy all at once. they break their own umbilical cord through their writhing and struggles, and generally all other birth residue will dry and/or flake off of them once they become the cute, fluffy boogers that we all know and love.

i wanted to write this post today to show you the variation in birth time and circumstance for our chicks so that you don’t worry if you hatch some chicks of your own!

first of all, i noticed that once the first pip happens, it might be anywhere from 2 to 48 hours before the chick emerges. it is important to be patient during this time and let them follow nature’s guide. i did notice however, that once the chick has pipped all around the circumference of the egg, making it ready to bust the top off, it usually takes about 15 or 20 minutes for the chick to break out. this was the case with all of our 22 hatched eggs, except 1 (i’ll explain the details of this in a future post).

the following is the breakdown of the births, beginning on the 21st day (when chicks are supposed to be due). i’d like to note that eggs were turned for the first 18 and a half days, and then left still afterwards. the incubator was kept at 99.5 degrees and the lid was only removed a few times for candling or adding water to increase humidity.

day 21

first at 9:39am
second at 4:26 pm
third at 6:49 pm
fourth at 7:50pm (born with a partially unabsorbed yolk sac and died a few days later)

overnight of day 21/early morning of day 22

fifth-tenth born

day 22

eleventh at 8:25 am
twelfth at 11:11 am
thirteenth at 4:41 pm
fourteenth at 4:51 pm

overnight of day 22/early morning of day 23

fifteenth-seventeenth born

day 23

eighteenth-twentieth born while we were at work
twenty-first at 9:15pm

day 24

twenty-second at 9:00pm via my intervention… more details about this intervention and how i knew to intervene in a future post!

i hope this shows how much variation there can be in a chick hatching, just like in human births!

stay tuned for more chick updates!

.:.

a chick is born: a complete birth video

December 3, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

i debated about what to post about today, and since so much has been happening lately in chicken-ville, i certainly have a lot of experiences i could write about. and then i realized how worn out i am from constantly checking on the chicks (although i know they should be fine without my constant vigilance)!

baby #1, drying and looking fluffier!

i have so many topic ideas for future posts about my experience with the hatching eggs and the new baby chicks, and we are only on day 4 for one of the babies and day 2 or 3 for most of them! some future posts that i will be writing about the great (and tiring) time we’ve had:

the variation in hatch times and circumstances (chickens being born are working on their own schedule just like humans are). usually, you just need to leave them alone, and let them do their thing like with a natural human labor, even if you think otherwise at first.
the loss of one of our chicks that was born with some of the yolk sac unabsorbed.
the intervention i used yesterday to get a chick out of its shell who was stuck (and had been stuck for over 36 hours)
what the “afterbirth” and broken shells are like
floating the final two, unpipped eggs to see if babies are possibly alive inside

for today i’ll leave you with this 10 minute video that shows the best part of the hatching process. this is the video of our first chick being born!

.:.

waiting for chicks: the first pip!

November 28, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

today around 11 am the first egg in the incubator started getting busy! this first chick pipped (poked a hole through) his egg and has begun his emergence into the world… though still, 12 hours later, he hasn’t made any more progress. this is normal so now we just have to wait!i also saw the egg wiggle many times and i even heard him chirping in there once! wow!

the first egg is pipped!

today we finished the final preparations for the chick’s house, and added pine shavings to the floor of the pen and covered that with dog pee pads. this is because the first few days the chicks need a textured material to walk on that isn’t their pine shavings (since they don’t learn what is food and what is bedding until the first few days have passed). we also added their food dish and one of their waterers. it’s all ready to go!

ready for chicks!

now we just have to wait as patiently as we can (yeah, right!)…

.:.

countdown to chicks: building their first house

November 26, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

our incubating eggs are almost done and the chick hatch is scheduled for so soon… saturday! i originally thought it was sunday, but i forgot to count the first day that the eggs started incubating as day 1 (which you are supposed to do if you started the eggs in the incubator before noon of that day).

needless to say, we’re getting really excited around here, even though we haven’t really checked out the eggs since my day 15 incubating chicks update.

today i removed the turning tray from the incubator and cut the turning motor off. i also added more water to the device so that the humidity will be higher when the chicks are hatching in a few days. this keeps them from getting stuck to their shell as they’re busting into the world! now that the eggs are on paper towels and without the turning try, the chicks will have more room to break free when the time comes.

almost time!

once i moved them back into the incubator after removing the tray, a couple of the eggs started to move, as if to say “hey, i ‘ll see you soon (and quit moving me around!)”

i also set up their first little home that will be theirs for the first weeks of their life. i used opened wine boxes, taped end to end. these were just the right height if i left the flaps on the bottom folded out to help support the rest of the cardboard. i taped more wine boxes together than i needed, which means that when i need to expand their home to give them more space as they grow, i can simply untape one portion of the cardboard circle and make the circle bigger, then retape it into another circular shape. rounded edges are important because chicks can get stuck in corners if other chicks are pressing against them, and they can be smothered and die.

you can see in the pictures below that in addition to folding out the bottom flaps of cardboard, i also taped them to a sheet of plastic underneath (in this case, an old shower curtain) to keep the circle from buckling or becoming malformed. this sheet of plastic should also help with cleanup once the chickens move outside later in the year. in the next day or two, we’ll be adding wood shavings to the floor of the little pen/house to absorb the poop and spilled water and to make the chicks more comfortable.

our quick and easy chick house!

the heat lamp really gets the space nice and toasty. the thermometer reads 96 degrees! perfect for day 1!

the red lamp is a heat lamp, and will keep areas of the house 95 degrees, the ideal starting temperature for little baby chickens. each week we’ll raise the lamp so that the temperature directly below the lamp drops by 5 degrees each week. this allows for the chicks to acclimate to cooler temperatures over time. in the meantime, the light will warm them and the red tint helps them from picking at each other (which can cause open sores and lead to a sick or dead chick).

their water and food dishes will be in the house near the warm, center area and we’ll leave the regular overhead light bulb on in their space so that they thrive and feel safer.

so exciting! only 3 days to go!

.:.

candling eggs and seeing baby chicks grow!

November 19, 2014 / Emma / 4 Comments

the incubating-chicken-eggs adventure continues… this time with some more hands-on activities!

last weekend we “candled” our eggs, a term which supposedly came from using the light of candles to see through the egg shell and observe the progress of the contents. this process usually shouldn’t be started before the eggs have been incubating for 7 or 8 days, since the growth of the baby chick inside is a lot more fragile during the first week (ish). also, waiting until at least a week into the process ensures that when you finally do candle the eggs, the embryo inside is much more visible.

the really cool thing about this simple and easy way to check on your eggs, is that it’s like a chicken ultrasound! you can actually see the life growing! candling also allows you to make sure that no bad eggs are still in the bunch that might explode later during incubation, affecting the environment of the viable eggs.

dark-shelled eggs are harder to see into, since the increased pigment in the shell obscures the light and keeps it from penetrating through as easily. jason and i actually has some trouble at first figuring out how to get the bright light to focus on the egg, until he had the idea to put our 1,000,000 candle power flashlight underneath a full toilet paper roll and sit the egg on top of the tube’s opening. this worked perfectly, and also meant that we didn’t have to hold the egg since it rested on the tube just fine on its own. i was able to shift the egg more easily this way, and locate the embryos. the pictures and video that we took really don’t do the experience justice…

let’s see… how do i explain this? the darkest blob that is a little higher than halfway up the egg and a little to the left of center are the eyes of the chick!

the video below shows the dark shape (which is easier to see in the video) moving around in its shell. dancing, really! all the information that i read said that you might see the embryos move inside their shell during candling if you got lucky, and i got lucky over a dozen times! after i finished squealing with delight, i filmed the video!

the coolest thing i learned?

that at least 21 out of our 27 incubating eggs are fertilized and growing magnificently! this is a really high ratio and makes me proud of rex! also, it makes me less inclined to eat him next time he tries to attack me!

after candling all of the eggs, i put a check mark on the eggs that i was sure were fertilized and growing. later tonight, after i’m done writing this, i plan to candle the other eggs and see if they are fertilized, as well as check on a few of the ones i’ve already checked off! talk about an awesome way to spend the evening!

our incubating eggs, most of them with check marks!

.:.

incubating chicken eggs 101

November 12, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

the time has come for us to have some babies… 21 chicken babies, hopefully!

we finally broke out our new incubator, the incuview all-in-one egg incubator, that has the ability to keep eggs moist, turn them every few hours, and keep them warm and toasty just like a mother hens’s butt! another really cool thing about the incuview is that it is capable of incubating reptile eggs and many bird eggs, such as chicken, goose, duck, and turkey.

so, this past weekend we decided to incubate 21 chicken eggs (this is the number that will fit in the incubator) so that we can have some new chickens this coming year! we started incubating on sunday and we saved eggs from last wednesday through saturday to be sure that we would have enough to incubate. these we stored at room temperature, pointy end down. we also made sure to shift them in their tray every day so that nothing inside the egg would begin to stick to the shell or form air bubbles. when sunday came around, we chose the best shaped, cleanest eggs from our collection and placed them end to end in the incubator.

our incubating eggs!

the default temperature fr the incubator is 99.5 degrees, which is ideal for chicken eggs, and the dial measuring humidity is easy to read and understand. i do recommend, however, putting less water in the bottom water tray than you think you need… i poured out a good bit of the water today, and the humidity is still very high inside the device. i’ll be checking the levels again tomorrow and pouring out even more water if the humidity doesn’t drop.

chicken eggs hatch after 21 days of incubation, and the last few days of incubation require a different humidity level in the environment so that as they hatch the chicks don’t get stuck to their shell. our incubator has a setting that allows for this increase in humidity and we can disengage the turning device so that the eggs are not turned during the last few, critical days.

the turning device is the metal rod that you see coming down from the lid of the incubator.

this weekend or sometime next week we will be able to hold the eggs up to a bright light to see which of the eggs are fertilized and which are developing properly. it’s like a chicken ultrasound!

the hardest part of the hatching will be watching the chicks be born without interfering. it is great that you can see the whole event but since they recommend waiting every few hours to remove hatched and dried off chicks, i’m going to be jumping out of my skin while i wait to hold them!

we’ve decided that once they’re born we’re going to keep them in a pen inside of the basement shower so that they can grow without being molested by bolt and without taking up too much of our basement space. once spring rolls around, we’re going to replace some of our older hens with this new batch, and eat whichever older hens and newer roosters are left.

so, we’re starting off on a new adventure here at kuska wiñasun homestead, an adventure that will hopefully end in many little chicks!

.:.

collecting eggs from broody hens

May 28, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

this video shows my daily, afternoon experience for the last several weeks. what fun it is to finally get to touch our bantam hens, who are much too speedy and cautious for me to catch and hold under normal circumstances!

this video was filmed about a week ago, and since then we’ve had some developments in those nest boxes… but more on this later. in the meantime, watch the video below and check out our technique for collecting eggs from underneath broody hens.

.:.

broody chickens, bald chickens, and roosters who attack!

May 14, 2014 / Emma / 2 Comments

beginning a few months ago, we noticed that about 5 or so of our standard hens were starting to go bald in very concentrated spots on their backs between their wings. my first thought was that the hens were picking at each other and eating those feathers, but after watching them i realized that i hadn’t seen a single hen pick at the feathers of another (except once when a hen got mad and chased another one, grabbing at her tail feathers). i also didn’t see how the chickens would be interested in eating each others’ feathers since they receive great supplements in their food that should prevent them from wanting dine on feathers.

so, i decided to look into the issue a little more and learned that the bald spots were the fault of the rooster, rex! once i read this, it made sense, of course!

one of rex’s favorite ladies–do you see the pink bald spot between her wings?

apparently, when young roosters get close to reaching full maturity, they pick out a couple hens that are their favorites and shower them with attention (you know what i mean, ya’ll). as they get older, they start to spread their attentions out over the whole flock so no hens are losing all of their feathers or getting too scratched up, but when they are young there is a risk that if their spurs are too sharp they can actually cut up the hens they really like.

after reading this, i made sure to look closely at the balding hens to see if they were cut at all… and they were not. but still, some were a little raw looking, which made up 1/2 of my mind when later…

rex actually attacked me with his spurs!

this happened about a week ago when i was feeding everyone. i noticed that rex had been a little bit more “pushy” and “prancey” lately but thought that if i didn’t get in his space too much he would leave me alone. untrue. once i turned my back and was walking to the back of the chicken pen where i dump out their food scraps from my school kids, he jumped up in the air and spurred me in both legs, right around the knees. he didn’t get through my pants to my left leg, but he did with my right. his spur didn’t go in very deep but it went through the pants, punctured my skin, and made me bleed.

of course i felt like killing him/crying after that but only managed to yell at him and throw the food scraps all over him in revenge, which he ended up liking very much.

the flock enjoying their new spot in the grass. rex is in the foreground, keeping himself between me and his hens.

since then, i’ve decided that as soon as we hatch out some more roosters i’m going to eat rex in a soup. in the meantime, we’ve clipped rex’s spurs. this is the choice that was easier to make since noticing the bald spots on some of the hens. i pinned down rex in a net (and felt awesome doing it!) and my dad nipped off the sharp ends of his spurs with handheld hedge nippers. he didn’t make any noises of pain (since the spur is a bone and the process didn’t hurt) and the end of the spur only bled a tiny bit and then quickly dried. now he can’t actually puncture me if he jumps me again and he shouldn’t scratch up the hens as much.

which leads me to the third type of chicken i want to talk about: a broody chicken! we have three hens who are trying to sit on nests/eggs right now and a few days ago we officially labeled their eggs (marking them with pencil) and let them stay on their nests! one standard is sitting on 7 standard sized eggs, one bantam is sitting on 2 bantam eggs, and another bantam is sitting on 2 standard eggs and 1 bantam egg. i’ve placed a piece of cardboard behind their nest boxes so that the sun doesn’t shine in on them and make them too hot.

two bantams sitting on eggs.

an unlikely duo: a bantam and a standard.

everyday i’ve collected the fresh eggs out from under the three hens (much to their chagrin) but left the eggs they’ve been sitting on. we hope they will remain broody and vigilant! if all goes well, we might be meeting up to 12 baby chicks as early as the 26th of may. cross your fingers for us!

.:.

KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013