Cycle of Life

Remember how I said that Jeff has interesting hobbies that keep us entertained? Well, our latest endeavor was to hatch baby quail. We tried last year and failed, so this year Jeff bought an incubator and ordered 24 eggs off of Ebay (15 from one seller, 9 from another). After three weeks of incubating, the first batch were ready to hatch. And of course, Jeff was in Hawaii for his ortho convention and I had to be the hatching mother.

The eggs in the incubator. They are tiny. About the size of your thumb joint.

After reducing the temperature and increasing the humidity (per Jeff's instructions), we waited. And then the baby quail started to hatch. Two hatched before I went to bed and another one had hatched by morning. By the end of the second day, ten baby quail had hatched from the eggs, and we got to see a couple of them actually emerge from the egg.

It may seem silly, but that was pretty amazing. To see new life come into the world is exciting and fun and a little bit spiritual, even when it is tiny quail chicks.

Video clip I sent to Jeff of one of the chicks hatching

Two just barely born\

A few of the quail weren't doing so well. Three of them had splayed legs, where they couldn't get on their feet, but instead showed off a swimming motion that wasn't very effective at all. Two others laid on their sides and kicked their legs, going around in circles rather than standing on their feet. But five of the ten babies looked great. They were peppy and were eating and drinking and peeping and they were the hit of the neighborhood.

One of the ones with splayed legs

We had them in the old lizard cages with a heat lamp and food and water for them. And then they started dying. The dizzy ones went first, and the kids named one Cocoa and buried it in the backyard. The next morning, Friday, Kyla was playing in the cage (something she shouldn't have been doing, but she couldn't resist) and was holding one of the chicks. She came upstairs to show me that it was dead.  And it sure was. I asked her what had happened, and she told me that she had squeezed it too hard. Suddenly having flashbacks to Of Mice and Men, I had to refrain from calling her "Lenny" as I tried to imagine what must have transpired in her little head to make her suddenly morph into a chick killer (it was clear from the poop on the bottom of the cage that she had squeezed it pretty hard). She was instantly contrite, but I was so sad. We all were.

Damon made this "headstone." It says 

Cocoa

bird 2012

Died 1 day old

Family friend

About an hour later, I noticed another chick was missing. I looked around for Carter and he came running out of one of the bedrooms upstairs yelling, "A baby chick!" He came down and excitedly showed me that the chick he was holding was also dead. Sadly, I asked him what had happened. He made a fist and said, "I squeeze it like this!" And another one gone. Another one gone. Another one bites the dust. I tried to tell him that the chick had died and that I was so sad, but he didn't seem the least bit upset. Later, when I asked him what had happened to the chick, he said, "Make die. Frow it in the trash."

How quickly my mood had swung from elated (with the birth of these little chicks) to depressed (with only seven out of ten left). Over the next day, before Jeff got home, the two with the worst leg spraddle also died. They just couldn't ever figure out how to make their legs work (I was also bummed that the two that were squoze couldn't have been the ones that were going to die anyway!). So when Jeff got home, only five of the ten babies were alive. And they seemed to be doing well.

But they weren't. We learned that the heat lamp was not keeping the cages warm enough. There was one mean chick we called Pecker who was picking on all the others, pecking at their legs and making them bleed. And then they started to die. None of them even lasted a week.

Ah, the cycle of life. Usually not 7 days long, but still. The kids are now assured that the chicks are in animal heaven, and we move on as if nothing has changed.

Out of the other 9 eggs we had, three hatched on Friday. Those three are currently living in the incubator, where it's a toasty 95 degrees, and they are doing well. The largest of the three we call Goliath, and he is a spunky little guy. He ran behind Jeff's big desk/bookshelf in his office and it was quite a scene trying to get him out (which we accomplished with a little coaxing from his mama (me) and a broom).

We are hoping we can keep these ones alive and keep them as pets. Because, seriously, who doesn't want a quail that thinks he's part of the family?