The Call Again Farm Journal

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth!  The computer (and my time) has been used lately for taxes and other things more import than blogging.  Not too much has happened since the 14th.  

I've been engaged with a battle with the chicken incubator and one of the older incubator with turkey eggs in it to try and get the temperature right.  Neither of these incubators was quite warm enough.  The temperature is adjusted by something you turn clockwise to decrease the temperature, counterclockwise to increase it.  I turned up the temperature just a tiny bit in each incubator, and now the temperature jumped to a degree or two above 100 in each of them and refuses to come down.  What's the big deal with one or two tiny degrees above ideal, you ask?  Well, one degree too warm or too hot gives you a very low hatch rate, and two degrees kills all the embryos.  See why I'm stressed?

I had my friend Kendal over today to watch while I candled turkey eggs fromthe incubator today.  First, I showed her the candling of the twenty-three day incubated eggs.  Basically, what you're looking for is the egg to be all black with the exception of the clear air cell at the big end of the egg.  It should look the same as it around the sixteenth day or so.  If the egg doesn't look right anymore, toss it.  Kendal quickly got a hang of candling this bunch, and could usually tell if an egg was good or bad.  We decided to toss five of these ones, three older ones with no date, one from the nest in the raspberries (either Rosy or a young one) on 3/22 which I though looked questionable at eighteenth day candling, and one from 3/25 which I though looked questionable at eighteenth day candling as well.

Then we did the twelfth day ones.  These are harder eggs to candle, but they're at the right stage to see the embryos move.  (See my previous blog entry on this subject, "The Miracle of Life".)  The first few eggs did not have embryos moving, but then we saw a couple with a heartbeat or something.  It was okay, but I'd led her to expect more.  Then finally we saw an embryo moving something I assume was a leg or a wing, probably the former.  Kendal was in love!  "It's waving to us!" she said.  We saw a few more embryos "wave" at us, which was a real treat for her.  We thought a couple embryos looked questionable, marked them as such, and left them in, and got rid of an egg from the raspberry nest from 3/28.

With regards to the broodies, Rosy decided to move her nest today.  I turn the nest box so she come get out.  She wouldn't get out.  She's refused to do so for days, so I pulled her off.  I went to go finish my chores, with every intention of putting her back when I was done.  I forgot.  When I went out to do the evening chores, she was back to incubating her eggs, but she'd pulled them all out of the nest box and was now sitting next to it.  Strange.

Despite Rosy's odd move, I came in from doing the evening chores tonight feeling very happy.  I'm in love with my turkeys right now, just for them being themselves.