The five babies are out of the incubator and into the brooder. The red is from a heat lamp overhead. The heat keeps their body temps up and the red keeps them from picking at each other. It also means that they will go to sleep. If you use a regular light bulb the chicks are up all night long.
The tiny baby to the left still has some fluffing to do. It also got shrink wrapped due to humidity loss. After a day or so I will give it a bath to help it along the way. The others are fluffing up nicely though. All five have had water and played with the food some. They aren't hearty eaters right at first. They eventually figure it out. Mainly right now they want to sleep. They will toddle about for several minutes, eat a little, drink a little, do some cheeping and then fall dead asleep. They are like puppies that way. Well, except for the cheeping part. HA!
So that's Hatching 101. We started with 25 eggs and have ended up with 5 chicks. The odds are pretty rotten for mailed eggs. I wish more had hatched, but at least I got these five out. They are looking good and will be a nice addition to the flock.
3 comments:
Congrats on your hatch! They're so adorable :)
Babies! Congratulations! I always gave our babies a bit of watermelon when they emerged from their mom's cover. We think of watermelon as chicken birthday cake!
These five are really quiet. I forget that the noise level is exponential with chicks. This lot just happily toddles about doing their own thing. They were a little noisy when I started cleaning off tushies, but other than that not a peep!
I WISH I had some watermelon about now. I would gobble it up myself and not share a bit. Yum!
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