Last night's adventures included making no jam whatsoever. I am now out of jelly jars. sigh. They sell them here at the grocery store but they cost sooo much more than they do at Wal-Mart.
Last night's adventures included me and my sons pushing and shoving one another as we hovered over the incubator, steaming up the viewing window. All the strong chicks have hatched and I was down to the weak ones that make my heart go all lurchy. You know those chicks. They are almost always the "special" eggs that you really wanted more than any of the other eggs you put in the incubator.
I live in the desert. According to what I read I should choose mediterranean type chickens - leghorns, catalana...chickens with small bodies and light feathering (usually accompanied by flighty, erratic personalities). So of course I immediately closed my mind to those and picked the exact opposite. I like orpingtons, sussex - anything enormous and loosely feathered. You know...chickens that do well in cold places like...England. Because of course England and the Mojave Desert have so much in common. What was I thinking? I was thinking how lovely they are. I was imagining all those lovely fat chickens waddling around my yard. I have one light sussex hen and one silver sussex hen (and two light sussex roosters - who also cover the rest of my mixed flock). So the eggs I set were mostly BO hens covered by Light Sussex roos - should produce a buff columbian patterned chicken if I did my genetics correctly. But a few of those eggs, the really "special" eggs for me were the pure sussex. I had only 4 eggs that I was sure were pure sussex.
So there we were fidgeting over the eggs in the incubator. The last five had pipped about 20 hours earlier and I was literally sitting on my fingers so as not to "help" them out of their shells. I couldn't stand it. I opened the 'bator and started checking on them. One dead. Two dead. I felt sick. I picked them out of the shells and held them turning them this way and that. I let my sons hold them. The boys lifted wings, flexed toes - generally studied the chicks from every angle. We sighed together.
I put the boys to bed and I hovered alone.
My husband watched the news and then at bedtime said what he always says "shall we go to bed woman, or shall we go to bed?" "Yes" I sighed. "I will be right there." Normally I will be right there means exactly that but he knows me well. He knows that I am worrying over those last few chicks so he did what any wise man would do. "I will wait for you in bed" he said.
Those last three chicks were alive...but for how long? Would they make it out of the shell? I always feel very "damned if I do, damned if I don't". I figure they are not going to make it out of the shell and although I will probably kill them trying to "help" them...well I didn't feel like I had a choice.
And so slowly and carefully I pick, pick, picked at the shells, stopping when I saw a dot of blood. I got up and down through the night and continued picking. And finally I got each one where the head could rotate and lift out and the baby was left in its shell but with its head out. And then I went to sleep.
And this morning I found two lovely little chicks wandering around the incubator. And one chick laying limply - alive but obviously not well.
And this afternoon at lunchtime it is still laying limply in the box. It probably won't make it. Did I help them? Will I be the one who causes the weak one to die? I dunno. It is kind of like raising children...I guess you do your best and try not to feel guilty.
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