candlling day 14

Day 14 rocked around, exciting! at this point we were down to 7 eggs, with 5 removed that didn't seem to have been developing at all.
2/3rds of the way through incubation and time to see if we have anything still developing

 

 

I forget which egg exactly was which, but most looked great! nice healthy veins, in some you could see the little chicken embryos moving around.

 

Egg Number 8 didn't look as good, there were no visible veins, only the small dark shadow of an embryo and cloudy patches. After a while of trying to decide whether to leave it, we worried that it didn't look right, what if it had died, what if the egg exploded and infected the other good eggs?
We removed it and checked, it looks like this baby had died maybe about day 12, I will save the pictures for another update

 

Our older birds are doing well, the weather is warming up and the days are getting longer which means more frequent eggs. It also means more frequent broody hens

 

 

Tanqueray seems to go broody about once a month. She's quite determined and can take a while to break. Tanky is doing a lot better with our original hens, she's found her spot on the roost and hangs out with the big ladies.

 

 

 

Sunny here has also gone broody in her typically bitey angry way. It never lasts long and she's back to runing around the yard harrasing the duck hens. It seems a few days with Sunny in broody prison helped Tanqueray integrate a bit better. Blue is in the back of the wheel barrow trying to encourage her friends to lay here for some reason.

 

And last but not least, our wild ducklings like to wander the yard. In the mornings they are already in the duck ponds, eating out of the grandpa feeder, drilling holes in the lawn... and at night they wander back to the flooded paddock to sleep with the other wild ducks.
So much for them being gone