Last night check the eggs under Lark because they are hatching
Notice a poop covered egg and go "well thats not developed probably"
Go to throw egg away but it peeps. "Uh OH!"
Proceed to candle poop egg and realize the baby is internally shrink wrapped.
Clean and sanitize poop egg so it doesnt give the baby an umbilical infection
Open egg and see the membranes are extremely dry. "Ok I can go ahead and open it"
Cut open the membrane by the babies beak so it can breathe and maybe hatch on its own
INSTANT blood. Stop immediately and dry the blood with kwikstop and put the egg back under mom to absorb the blood and hatch on their own.
Check this morning before work. Lark has kicked the egg away from her far away and the baby is cold and hasn't progressed. I think its dead.
I go to remove the egg and the baby immediately starts crying out. "OH SHIT"
Warm the egg up by the heater and start peeling away the membrane. If the baby doesnt hatch now it will die regardless.
The membranes are dry so no blood and the chick is vocal and wiggly.
Chick hatches on its own in my hand but wait tons of blood is pooling in my hand. The umbilical is completely open and pouring blood despite the chicken having absorbed all the yolk.
Immediately get a damp tissue to wrap the now coated in flour, blood, and kwikstop chick to stop the bleeding.
I stop the bleeding and both me and the chick are exhausted. I wait an hour or two to make sure the umbilical is closed then I give it back to Lark so it can fluff up.
Been a bit busy round the homestead with the weather change, but being busy seems more common than not being busy lol
The month olds hot moved outside, to make way for the new chicks inside
Given everywheres been sold out consistently and that nature will do as nature does, we'll likely continue hatching out through the summer.
Onwards to the garden,
I uppoted these melons and some zuchinnis so they can get just a lil bit bigger before full transplant. Any extras I'm gonna try to sell this year for garden funds.
Very little growth on the tomato and pepper seeds, I had hoped I'd be lucky with the weather but I guess I'll have to wait on having either and hope the one si left to overwinter start producing soon.
Not much in the new strawberry bed. The peas are producing a decent snack amount now, so I'll need to figure a way to double the size of pea/bean areas.
Did some dye work on some pants. They went from olive green, blue and khaki to as black as I could. Also hemmed them for summer wear.
I used rit dye and idye poly. Currently I would recommend both. Idye poly took a looong time to run clear before I could give them a run in the washer, they 100% covered the thread and buttons the rit dye did not.
Their not dark enough for the wearer yet, so I'm on the hunt for another dye to try. If anyone has suggestion the fabric is cotton and I believe a polyblend of some sort for the thread.
Also we got a composter, as we are pretty certain the city's recycling/green program hasn't been back to normal since the virus closures reopened, and ive seen both barrels picked up by the same truck more than once since. While we can't do much on that (except call up, complain/explain and take action), we decided it was time to learn composting to close and lesson our waste stream more if we can.
On the bonus side, when its done we'll have fresh dirt for our garden which is always a win 🏆. The worst so far has been figuring out a good collection and take out system for the daily bits 😂.
In the kitchen,
Ive been saving every citrus peel i can (using a veggie peeler to make strips) and drying them out. Some ive used for tea, some for dry seasoning flavor (super excellent btw, I cannot believe i ever enjoyed the dusty stuff in the cheapo bottle.) And fresh in sauces. I'm also saving seeds to give a try at sprouting them. Figure why not, it's good practice 🌱
Alright, ive got to get my day started so I'm heading off.
My mom bought me these chickens in late 2022 at an auction. There were originally four and she got them for the extravagant price of $0.75 per bird. I didn’t have chickens or plan on getting chickens but if your mom buys them then you do what you have to do. So I took them home and threw together a coop.
They were very small at the time. Couldn’t tell if they were hens or Roos. But I ended up with three hens and a roo. No clue what breed they are and I don’t remember what they sold as either but they are a smaller type. They are quite docile and pretty good layers and if you look close you can see they have a topping of feathers on their head like a little pompadour. They are quite broody as well.
And I love love love this little rooster. Such a handsome boi and so sweet to his girls.
I’ve lost one of the hens and only have two so I wanted to breed them to continue the bloodline of chickens that my mother got me. So I did some incubating and though I didn’t plan it I got one hatched ON MY BIRTHDAY!
Behold my poofy headed Birthday Chicken. And it turned out to be a hen! The fact that she is tan rather than snowy white is slightly disappointing but it is what it is.
I plan to breed her to an Ayam Cemani rooster to see what happens.
If any cool chicken peeps see this and have any ideas on what the parent birds are I’d love to hear them! I haven’t had any luck getting an ID on them.
Here's the incubator I have had the most success with:
A bald eagle in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, is proving just how far moms will go to keep their babies safe. Even being buried up to her head in the snow won’t stop this eagle mom, known as Bella, from keeping her eggs warm. Bella and her mate, Smitty, have returned to their nest 100 feet up in a large sycamore tree near the Potomac River every year since 2011 to raise their chicks.
Hi I just want to say I love your blog and your snakes are so freaking cute!! I also had a question if you have time to answer it. I really love reptiles and would like to get into reptile keeping (probably not for a year or so as I have one more semester of my bachelor's degree and then will probably be moving). I've been doing a lot of research in preparation for bringing one home in the future. However, I've been wondering, do people ever sell fertilized reptile hatching eggs for people to hatch? I don't think this is something I would do if any breeders offered it because I don't have much experience, but I do breed chickens and people do this all the time with chicken eggs, so I was wondering if it is something people do with reptiles too. I imagine shipping would be harder with reptile eggs than chicken eggs bc of how soft they are, but I was still curious and thought it might be worth asking!
Hi there!
Okay I LOVE this ask. I think about this sort of thing a lot and while it's definitely not a thing I often wish it could be.
The very short answer is that for most reptiles, selling a fertilized egg to hatch at home is not feasible. It's definitely not possible to ship fertilized reptile eggs with any hope of hatching them, but in a few rare cases you could possibly sell one in person, in an insulated container, and if the buyer went straight home and got it into an incubator it would probably be okay.
There are a few reasons why reputable reptile breeders don't do this.
Consider that chickens have a fast rate of maturity, relatively fast incubation, regular and predictable breeding cycle, and eggs can rest for a bit before they're incubated for hatching. All of this adds up to eggs that are relatively abundant, inexpensive, forgiving in terms of being jostled since the eggs are designed to be turned during incubation, a quick turnaround from purchase to enjoying your new pet, and within a year, if you hatched a hen, you'll be able to make more eggs. As a domesticated species bred for hardiness and responsiveness to human care, healthy chicks will start eating and displaying normal chickeny behaviors right away.
Corn snakes, for contrast, take up to 4 years to mature, they only breed once per year and lay a relatively small number of eggs per breeding season compared to an average chicken, their eggs take 65-ish days to incubate, and the embryos adhere to the top of the egg very soon after the eggs are laid so they can not be turned or the embryo will be smothered by their own yolk. Once hatched, a corn snake neonate will not eat until after their first shed and sometimes a bit after that! This can be a harrowing, delicate time in a baby snake's life and they need an experienced keeper to help them thrive.
Furthermore, chickens come in specialized breeds where corn snakes are an undomesticated species. Reptiles come in color morphs but they don't have defined breeds with expected size, color, temperament, health expectations, or fecundity the way chickens do.
So if you were to, say, buy buff orpington hatching eggs, you'd reliably hatch buff orpingtons, with orpington personalities and characteristics. If you bred two hypo corn snakes, you'd definitely get hypo corn snake babies but you might also get other color morphs depending on the genetics of the parents. Unless you know very well the specific genes, temperaments, sizes, and health histories of the parents you won't have any idea of what's going to hatch. And even with all that information, it's still quite variable!
Finally, corn snakes cost a lot more than most chicken breeds and the price of a snake is in part determined by the genes they carry. Two snakes in the same clutch might vary significantly in terms of color expression, so you could have a $50 snake and a $200 snake in the same clutch! Since every egg carries a risk of failing to hatch, sellers don't usually price their snakes until they're alive, eating, and thriving. If a seller were to price their eggs, knowing the genetics of the parents that produced said eggs, they'd either be taking a huge loss on the value of a potentially valuable snake or asking their buyer to incur a significant loss should an expensive egg fail. If a breeder were to go this route, they'd probably only offer eggs that they know are low-dollar-value or have low desirability, and then we have to ask why somebody is breeding snakes they don't think are desirable...
All said and done, it's probably a safer idea to contact a local breeder and ask them to tag an egg for you, allowing you the first right of refusal on whomever hatches. They'll insure that "your" egg stays safe and if for any reason it does fail, you won't have invested anything in it except hope.
I hope this helps explain and that I didn't crush anybody's dreams.
