This summer, we decided to get into owning chickens. We deliberated between getting POL (point of lay) hens and decided on incubating our own eggs to experience life from conception to hatch. My girl friend gave me 12 Australorp eggs and we borrowed an incubator from a local lady and got to work. We candled all 12 eggs, placed them in the incubator and waited. Day 7, we candled them again and saw many of them starting to develop. Day 11 we candled them again and the last time on day 14 to check which ones were viable and still developing, and which ones could be removed.
We ended up with 6 viable, developing eggs and were excited to see the beginning of life. We waited, and waited and waited...finally on day 21, the eggs began to hatch. By day 23 we had 2 chickies and we waited patiently for the other 4. After day 27, I decided to candle again and then made the executive decision to crack the unhatched ones. 2 of the unhatched chickies had stopped developing somewhere along day 10-14, one had stopped developing almost immediately and one was very close to hatching and never did.
This left us with 2 chickies and one had special needs; we realized by day 2 that the one had severely splayed legs, so I looked up how to help it and wrapped it's little legs in a bandaid as a splint for 7 days. Unfortunately, I realized it was not improving as quickly as it should be and upon further investigation; uncovered that it had a severe infection in it's hocks. We decided to humanely euthanize the little love before it suffered too much; which left us with one very lonely, very loud baby chicken.
We decided to get the remaining little bugger some friends, and after relentlessly looking online for a week; I found a breeder just over an hour away. So I made the trek, cursing my life decisions and pulled into the driveway of a very terse woman who was less than impressed that I had intended on e transfer instead of cash (because I was going to be late if I stopped). I got the 2 new chickies home, we settled on 2, gold laced orpington's; absolutely beautiful birds, but apparently, not very hearty. The smaller of the 2 seemed very lethargic upon getting them home and we tried to get it to perk up. The following day, it was struggling to breathe and passed in my arms. I guess the moral of the story, is just buy fuckin POL hens to avoid heartbreak and a WHOLE LOT of extra work. We now have the remaining Australorp and Orpington in a dog kennel in our reptile room; and would you fuckin believe that the Australorp we tried so desperately to give a good life; is turning out to be a god damn ROOSTER?!
Now, my big hens are too big to put the baby chickies in with, the rooster is picking on the baby orpington and I'm going out of my fuckin' mind coming to terms with the fact that the rooster has to go and we will now have one, singular house chicken until she is big enough to go out with our other ladies in the coop. Learn from me, if you must hatch chickens for the "full effect", find a home for them beforehand...or just fuckin' don't and start with actual hens. Unless you enjoy having little assholes in your home for far too long. P.S. they fuckin stink and they SCREAM, they scream if you separate them, they scream when they're fighting and they scream because they decide to dump their food and water. Send help and some vodka; please!
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