Quail Update...

I want to start off by saying that all of this is very new to me. With the exception of our cats having kittens when I was a kid, I have never raised anything from birth. I certainly have never taken an egg and incubated it from a yolk and white into a living, breathing being. It has been nothing short of amazing.

My mother came running into our bedroom at 6:00 this morning yelling "WE HAVE BABIES!!". Doug and I, being dead to the world - because we hadn't slept at all from watching the eggs, did not respond. My mother shook me out of a fitful sleep to tell me the news. I proceeded to beat the crap out of Doug gently wake Doug up to tell him the news. We all ran into the guest bedroom and were greeted by chirps and squirmy little black things floppin' about like fish out of water...

After several hours of worrying about the temperature and the humidity, we finally moved them into the brooder to get them to dry off.

We needed to show them the food and water so Doug went in to teach. This little guy jumped right into his hand. When I say that they are tiny, I am not joking...


We still have a few eggs in the incubator that are still moving around. We are going to leave them in there for now. We started out with 29 eggs. Three of them never developed (we could tell from candling them - by the way, NEVER use a lighter to candle an egg...you will burn your fingers...p.s. no eggs were hurt in my idiotic attempt to candle them with the lighter). Out of 26, we had 15 that hatched and three that did not make it out of the incubator. So there are 12 little guys kickin' it in the brooder, we hope that some of the others hatch.



It was tough to loose those three. I know that mother nature doesn't always let every creature live. I get that. My biggest issue is that if they are going to die, I want it to be because mother nature knew it was right for them...not because I did something wrong. I still have to think on that to make it right in my head.