Sunday, August 4, 2013

Update on the Cracked Egg

If you have not already read the story of how one of my fertile and developing eggs was cracked, you can read it HERE.

I should mention that while I don't feel the use of medical tape intervention to be "natural," I can only say that with such an important egg at stake, the tape worked.

And now what you've been waiting for...

Proof!!

 Poor little "Humpty Dumpty" is a little stickier than its siblings. When I removed the tape from the egg, the tape pulled a nickle-size piece of shell off with it. This resulted in higher moisture loss while the chick was hatching and some of the membrane dried on the chick.

 Group photo - Humpty is in the far right.



 A sibling... just because.

 And the other sibling. Aren't they precious?

I'm happy to say that mom is doing very well with her new babies. I should mention that Mamma (a Silkie X Bantam Cochin) turned 25 weeks of age only yesterday! Yup - she went broody at 23 weeks after starting laying at only 20 weeks of age. (She was given eggs that had already been developing for a week.) I have a feeling she's going to be a great mamma to a lot of chicks in her life...  The best incubators are the ones that peck when you try to candle the eggs!

So, that's the story of a cracked and dented egg. Luckily for me medical tape did a better job than all the king's horses and all the king's men did in the classic children's rhyme, and this story has a much happier ending!

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