The Call Again Farm Journal

What a hectic day!  I awoke at 7 a.m., with the full intent of transferring the turkeys from the incubator to the brooder.  Only thing was I still hadn't built the brooder yet!

Before I started, I peeked in the incubator to check on the poults (baby turkeys), only to find that a new baby had hatched overnight.  It still looked pretty wet, and there was an egg that looked like it still might hatch, so I worriedly  postponed taking the poults out of the incubator until after church.  I was worried because poults really should come out of the incubator to get food and water within 48 hours, and 7 a.m. would have been 48 hours after the first two poults had hatched.

I then went to do the morning chores.  When I checked on the chicks, I saw that two were dead.  One of them had looked so bad on Friday that I was sure I was going to find it dead yesterday morning, so it's death was no surprise.  I wasn't too upset about the other chick, either, as it's not that uncommon for poults and chicks to die in the first two weeks of their life.  I noticed that another chick was sleeping standing up with its wings dropped to the ground, looking generally unthrifty (droopy).

After a disagreement about the new hanging feeders and waterers in the (adult) chicken coop, Bob and I made the brooder for the turkey poults.  We duct-taped together large piece of cardboard to make an enclosure that's a little over eight square feet.  Bob then hung the heat lamp over part of it.

I checked on the chicks again, and the unthrifty chick was now asleep.  I picked it up, and it didn't even open its eyes.  The other chicks, even sleeping ones, run away before I can pick them up, so clearly something was up with this chick.  I showed the chick to Bob and Dianna, and we all agreed it was close to death.  I held the chick, hoping that it would die in my hand instead of being picked on by other chicks in the chicken brooder.  

It held onto life, and it was time to get ready for church, so I decided to mix some sugar water for it.  Sugar water is sometimes fed to mail-ordered chicks when received to give them a quick energy boost.  Last year, I had a poult that hatched four days late, was blind in one eye, couldn't stand, and was having uncontrollable spasms of its body.  I gave it sugar water, and the next day it was just like a normal poult, except it was still blind in that one eye.  This little chick loved the sugar water, too, and started to perk up.

After church, Bob hung a heat lamp in the opposite side of the workshop as the chicken brooder, and I put the dying (?) chick in a box under it.  It sleeps nearly constantly, though I wake it up every couple of hours to give it more sugar water.  I'm still really afraid it's going to die.

Around 1:30, a guy who'd scheduled an appointment to visit my little farm showed up.  I showed him the chicks, adult chickens, and adult turkeys, and he asked tons of questions.  He bought eggs and honey, and ordered chicken and turkey.

After he left, Dianna and I transferred the poults from incubator to the brooder.  They were eating wood chips, so we put burlap over the wood chips.  When we opened the incubator, we also sprayed the four eggs that had cracks with water to replace the humidity lost by opening the incubator so the membranes wouldn't dry and harden.  Two of the eggs already had been cracked so long that their membranes had hardened, so we held little hope for them.  About half an hour later, at 4:10 p.m., a poult hatched from one of the two more promising eggs.  It looks very weak, and I'm worried about it.

Dianna and I then candled the chicken eggs.  Of the thirteen, we eliminated one from 3/31 and 4/6.  These two were ones that had looked bad last candling and I'd accidentally forgotten to take them out then.  After candling, we took the chicken eggs out of the turner and onto the wire floor for hatching. 

I now feel exhausted, both physically and emotionally.  It's been a busy, poultry-filled day, and I just want to go to bed.  I feel dread the fact that I still have to candle the turkey eggs in the left incubator (this is the batch that isn't hatching yet) and do the evening chores.