today was a day for the books.
It was a productive workday this morning, I got so much done for the Doula training program I am writing, and feel really empowered there… my latest clients are all healthy and sound, births are on their way to progressing with minimal intervention and we’ve had a decent amount of quail chicks hatching in the incubator.
But holy cannoli, what a day.
Our January 19 hatchlings grew up and went into the step up cage today. They are off heat lamp supplementation, feathered out, safe from drafts, and learning how to walk on coated hardware cloth. I’ll try to get photos and add them in tomorrow.
We moved 18 hatchlings in the brooder (which was an experience on its own,) and determined we still have 22 eggs that we are still waiting on to hatch. Three of them appear to be in process of hatching right now. My hope is that they pop like popcorn overnight, and we wake to a small army of tiny cute little Coturnix quail to add to the brooder once they fluff up. It’s what happened yesterday and as it looks like 3 are trying to break free of their shells, they just might make it.
The eggs we have been waiting on since Friday finally made it from Texas, but not without suffering heavy losses. They get what I call my Mother’s Luggage Tour… you know when your baggage gets to see more of the world than you got to on your journey? These little guys overshot St. Louis and ended up in Indianapolis, then Champaign, and then back to St Louis and to Belleville Illinois before they finally made it to our local post office and our carrier got to bring them to us this morning. The plan was they’d be here Friday, but then winter weather descended and Texas got cold again, and even the St. Louis area got snow.
So once they got here we checked them out. We were saddened to find mass casualties on a tiny egg scale. It wasn’t pretty I tell you. We did manage to have some not be broken, and we’re hoping they didn’t freeze, thaw, and re-freeze, to thaw again in the process of their journey. The remaining 34 are sitting in sand coming to room temperature, point down, to be put in the incubator tomorrow after we decide to call it for these remaining eggs waiting to hatch.
Our plan is to try hatching the surviving Texas 34, but we’ll know on candling day of their travel mates that survived (Bob Whites can be candled on day 7 and those were their shipment mates, (being picked up by a friend tomorrow) and if this shipment is just gone and not gonna make it we will know by then…
Either way, the sender in Texas will be replacing this shipment, and I get to figure out a claim on our insured eggs. This Quail breeder is awesome, Mother Nature and the USPS weren’t. It will be warming up and hopefully, we’re done with blizzard weather. In the meantime, I have a bead on other Celedon breeders as well for a spring order, and Gary is working like a mad man to both finish painting projects and get on the next quail cage. We’re gonna need a grow-out cage soon at this point.
I went to pick up our grocery order from the store today. There were no chicken breasts to be found.
Yeah, I’m good with raising these little birds for food.
I have no qualms about doing this for my family’s needs, even when it brings me days like today for chaos.
Annie is a semi-retired homebirth midwife, a doula trainer, and a farmer’s granddaughter. It all ties into her mad plan to be as self-sufficient as she can while returning to her roots.
