The turkey poults are doing great! Momma turkey has all three out adventuring all day everyday. They will be 3 weeks old tomorrow.
When you’re on social media and you’re seeing all the homesteaders and hobby farms vomiting rainbows and pooping glitter about their picture perfect lifestyles… and it’s got you dreaming of canning green beans you grew, bottle feeding lambs, snuggling new born calves and collecting a pastel assortments of eggs. I want you to know that while it IS the most full filling lifestyle for us, that we like to highlight our lives because those are the things that make it worth it, it comes at a price.
You will sweat. You will freeze. You will be filthy. You will bleed. You will scream. And you will cry.
The hardest part of farming for me is falling in love with an animal, watching my partner do the same, and pouring so much of ourselves into it to get it where it needs to be just to watch it slip out of our hands.
Kipp has been heavy on my mind today.
Responsible preservation breeders who title, work, and health/genetic test their dogs do not put dogs at risk for being euthanized in shelters. Back yard breeders and puppy mills are the foundation of the over crowded animal shelter situation in every town across America.
The best companion dog I ever had came from an animal shelter. When I need a dog for a specific task I seek a preservation breeder.
Last night we took the ducks down to the creek to swim and explore a bit.
Update on Kippy
Kipp is fully recovered from his severe adverse reaction to Banamine. So that’s fantastic!
Two days ago we dewormed him with a one time fenbendazole feed through. We chose fenbendazole as the active ingredient because it’s the safest for a horse with a suspected high worm load and unknown history. He received it in his dinner bucket and had no issue finishing it off. Yesterday morning he was just excited as ever for breakfast but last night he didn’t come up for dinner and turned his nose up when James took it to him. When giving Kipper a once over James found he was expelling a fair amount of worms so he checked his vitals and listened to his gut noises, he seemed ok. We checked on him before bed and he was still up, standing in the creek like usually. This morning Kipper was not pumped for breakfast but he did eat it, we’ll be keeping a close eye on him as he goes through the parasite load die off.
Here’s a quick clip of Kipp very excited to see his favorite person James. Safe to say he crosses water no problem lol
I want to put a warning on this story and video. Animal in distress. I did drop a cuss word in the video right after the 1:50 mark... so mute for the kids sorry 🤷🏻♀️
This little poult pipped, zipped, and then... got stuck. It had been trying to hatch for a bit over 24 hours. Only half of the top of the shell came off keeping its head pinned then the membrane dried, basically glueing the chick in.
So we warmed water up, piped it into tray two to bring the humidity up to 85% and also bringing the temp up ever so slightly. This way when we opened the incubator and the humidity would drop it would drop into a safe zone of around 60/65% and the temp would stay safe also. We quickly removed the 3 strong hatchers and James rushed them away to their brooder.
Once I grabbed this chick I placed it into a paper towel I soaked with very warm water. Started chipping away at shell, wetting membrane to soften it and making a few snips where the membrane was super dried to a crisp.
I felt it was important to help this chick just enough to where it still had to mostly hatch itself. Once back in the incubator it took a small break and pushed itself out of the shell within 15 mins. After gaining strength and drying over night this chick is standing nice and tall and will be ready for the brooder this afternoon.
Its also important to take extreme care in doing this, you have to watch for veins in the membrane and make sure not to disturb them or the chick can bleed to death. You also cannot just pull the chick out or pull the shell away from the bottom half, you risk pulling intestines out.
There was another chick that we had to help. It was much harder to do than this. It was in a really bad way. That chick seems to be doing ok also but is not standing straight up yet so we will keep an eye on it.
Turkey poult hatching on day 26
Incubation day 26
Number three! I’m very happy with this time lapse video.
Number two hatched this morning between 3am and 7am. And I can see pips on 3 more eggs. If one more hatches we’ll be at 50% which is good and I’ll be totally happy with that. Any more are a bonus!
Incubation day 26
Lock down day two
I almost missed it! I missed the zip but I got a great time-lapse of the hatch.
3 more eggs are pipped. 🤞🤞
They are best friends 🥰 that didn’t take long.
Candled the turkey eggs last night.
Turkey eggs are a bit different than chicken eggs. You start candling at day 10 instead of day 4. It is a bit hard to see if anything is going on in these eggs because of the heavy speckling. This was the easiest of the bunch to candle and it looks like there is some good movement in there. As far as I can tell it looks as if all the embryo in each of the 8 eggs have started to develop. My only concern is that some of the air cells look a bit wonky, it could be fine but I’m not sure. We shall see in 18 days I suppose.
When you tell him you’re done buying peeps for a while.
🤣🤣🤣
