One of the new Slate poults. Sorry the picture was just a little out of focus. They are still pretty young, so I'll try to get soem better pics soon.



This is all the turkeys in their box. You can see the feathers on the older poult in the middle of the picture. The one in the upper left is the new poult that I just took out of the incubator a few minutes earlier.

This is the incubator after I took the poult and the shell out. I'll have to take a picture of a shell, they look like some one opened them with a can opener or something. Almost perfect circles cutting off the end of the egg. The goose egg in this one I have helped chip a larger hole in. The last goose took over a day to get out of the shell. Some people say to help them a little, some say it can take up to three days for them to get out. Trying to keep the humidity up and I'll help crack the shell some, slowly so as not to injure the chick. If you look you can see holes in the two green eggs in the lower right corner.

This is our gosling! Haven't given it a name yet, and not sure if it is a boy or girl. Too soon to tell. But the picture is an accurate depiction of its size relative to the chickens. It reallyt is 4 or 5 times larger. And they pile on it like an over sized pillow. So funny to watch. You can also see the white leg band I got for the goose, so we can tell it from all the others as they grow. This is the first one we hatched, so I think I am going to keep it, instead of eating it or giving it away. And hopefully I'll soon have a few more to get it confused with.

The Rhode Island Reds are getting big also and starting to want to fly. So I held the wings out to show just how big the wings have gotten. It stayed like that for about 30 seconds or so. They aren't exactly tame, but they tolerate a lot. Should be good layers, and maybe I'll keep one of the roosters. Think I have 2 hens and 2 roos. Time will tell.

12 May 2010

Today is the day before hatch day, but I got up and there were 3 turkey poults looking up at me from the incubator. 2 are blue slates and the other one is a red. Tonight after work there was another slate poult. And a goose egg has a large hole in it and two chicken eggs have holes. So I’m expecting several more in the morning.

Moved the goose and the 4 Rhode Island reds out into the living room today. And I out the new turkey poults in with the older ones, so there are 4 reds and 3 slates. The eggs that hatched today were numbered 6, 7, 8 and 9.