I'm a grandma...again. Yesterday one of our peacock eggs hatched... (without me :-( successfully! Some of the boys from Quality Sheds were here to deliver a new ramp and they asked me how many chicks we had in the incubator. I replied 4 and they were due to hatch soon...if we were lucky. One said, "You have a chick in the incubator." Sure enough, the egg closest to the side of the incubator had hatched sometime between 10 and 3. It was nestled in one of the egg holes where we place the eggs in the turner. I was slightly panicked as I had NO IDEA what to do. Thank God Siri was there to help me find some answers. They can be left in the incubator as long as 24 hrs. to dry off.... but it appeared that I could remove him and dry him myself. I waited for "help" and we removed him and put him under the heat lamp to dry a bit more and allow us to add one more egg to the incubator. No signs of the other 3 beginning to pip. They may not have made the trip...we'll see!
I have learned so much about the bird world. When we turned her/him over, we saw the dime sized red bulge where he had absorbed the yolk into his body. That will nourish him for about 3 days. (That's why so many chicks are mailed to stores and farmers as young as one day old. There is no concern about them being hungry....cool eh?) They also have a tiny hard bump on the end of their beak called an egg tooth. This is how they break the shell and begin pipping (hatching.) The tooth will dissolve within a few days. Also, the egg is fairly easily cracked from the inside out but quite safe and benign from the outside. Easy to get out, hard to get in!
We've had a few suggestions for names... If it's a girl we like Penelope. If it's a boy, we like Perry or Pete! For now, again we have a Bruce....nobody knows for sure. It would be great for Bruce to have a sibling but time will tell. For now, Aunt Lacie is getting a little mirror so Bruce can work on who the hell he is!
The night went well and Bruce is trying to get his bearings and work with his humongous feet.... He'll soon have a lot of feathers to hold up! They can grow (the feathers) about 1/4 inch a DAY!
Welcome to EIEIO Bruce! Who'da thunk!?
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