Chicks - Grow with me - 1-4 Days

Days 1-4

One of the Araucana hens that we bought was laying fertile eggs. Little Pippy must have been charmed by the rooster at her last home.  So we decided to set three of her eggs and hope for the best.

We cobbled together a home made incubator, made out of a hotplate with a styrofoam box with the base cut out to fit the hotplate, a saucer of water and some thermometers.  Getting the temperature to stay at 37.5 degrees celsius was a bit of a challenge as you have to rotate the eggs 3 times a day to prevent the yolk from sticking to one side. We ended up turning the egg once before bed, once when we got up in the morning and once when we got back from work. Candling was exciting, not helped by the fact that we didn't have a good torch, but once we did get one, excitement reigns when you see a shadow moving within the egg!

We really didn't expect any of the eggs to hatch in our home made incubator, but to our surprise, on day 22 (yes a day late) we were greeted with shrill chirping from egg number 2!

As you can see from the photo above, the temperature dropped the moment we opened the lid and so did the humidity. We waited an extra 3 days for the other two eggs to hatch, with no luck. Candling at day 3 showed that the eggs had dehydrated and the chicks had basically suffocated :(

So little chick was placed in a brooder all by themselves. Again, this was homemade, a giant styrofoam box, with a cardboard box inside for shade and a normal lamp above it. We used a thermometer to keep an eye on the temperature.

 

Here's the cutie pie under the cheezels box the next morning :)

So small!

 Exploring outside the box today. Notice the traces of the egg tooth on the edge of the beak.

One thing to note is that when newborn chicks sleep, they just collapse where they are. Some will try to resist sleep though, they will be standing, their eyes close, head starts drooping until they just collapse.

At 3 days old, I gave the chicky a teddy bear for company

I also didn't like the lamp on 24 hours a day. I didn't think the little chick would like the light on all the time. So I used an old reptile heat mat that I had. It only has a 7W output, so low electricity usage. Just adjusted the height with cups as you can see in the photo. The little chick knows how to find the warm spots :)

So what would you do if only one chick hatched? And there are no broody hens?  Raise the little one up as an only child?

Or....

Buy another chick to keep this one company!  Yes stay tuned....