Round Two, Adieu.

It's official. I candled the Round Two eggs again last night and saw nothing so this morning I took them outside and did our now-traditional cracking of the bad eggs. Same broken yolks but at least this time they had the decency to stink a little.

Around noon we received our new clutch of victims--um, I mean, eggs. These are regular size birds as opposed to the bantams we've been working with in our first two attempts. The eggs are also a little more green than blue. Here's a comparison shot between the second round eggs (pre-crack party) and one of the new set:

Also, word of my egg-hatching ineptitude seems to have spread throughout the poultry community. Our new egg connection has sent us 14 of these big boys (or girls, hopefully). I've used this as an excuse to buy a larger incubator. More pictures to follow. ;-)

Hard is good

Hard is good . . . or at least that's what I'm telling myself. It's important to me that my daughter grows up to be the kind of person who takes the road less traveled--or blazes her own path--and that's not easy. I never want her to make important decisions in her life based on which path is the easiest. I certainly haven't.

Compared to some of the big decisions that have defined my life food seems pretty insignificant, but I'm beginning to believe more and more that it's a crucial component in what's gone "wrong" with our western lifestyle. Since I've been trying to address this issue, the sheer magnitude of the problem has become nearly overwhelming. I'm not a gourmet chef and my cooking skills are rudimentary at best. Over the last five years or so I've gone from ordering a value meal in the drive thru (supersize me) to staring down a plate of organic beef and trying to figure out how to turn it into a meal my two year old will eat. (That was tonight, by the way, and I was successful!)

So this is all a very long, draw out way to say that I don't think Round Two of our egg experiment is going to be successful, but I'm not giving up. Having access to real food and understanding where real food comes from--and it isn't a paper bag covered in golden arches--is Really Important. And things that are Really Important are worth doing, even if they're hard.

I never learn

I went back and looked at the posts from our first experiment and I'm pretty much on track with my lack of patience. I candled our three new eggs and, of course, there's nothing to see yet. Ugh.

Patience is not one of my virtues

I'm trying very, very hard to leave the eggs alone but it's taking a tremendous force of will. I pretty much would like to sit in the dark with the eggs and a flashlight 24/7. Yes, my life is that exciting.

The good news is that I have plenty to keep me busy this week. In a perfect world, I would definitely be able to hold off until Friday to candle them. In reality land, I'm hoping for Wednesday. ;-)

Phase Two has begun!!!

At 12:13pm today I received our replacement eggs. They were supposed to be here by noon and the poor innocent woman at the post office got quite an earful. I'm pretty sure she's going to be thinking of me as "that crazy egg lady" for quite a while.

Of course, I put my three new little guys into the incubator right away. My goal with this batch is to be a little more hands off. I'm going to try not to candle them until Day 7. We'll see how long I can hold out. :-)

In the meantime, here are the new kids on the block. Hopefully they'll have a much longer future ahead of them than the last set.

The experiment is over :-(

Yesterday I posted about my concerns over the condensation and humidity in the incubator. After doing some research and getting some advice, I very carefully removed junior from the incubator and cleaned out all of the water reservoirs to let him dry out a little. The lower humidity seemed to cause the temperature to stay higher and all night I struggled with keeping him at 100 degrees. I got up at 1:30am this morning to check on his temp and put the fan on in the kitchen to cool him off another half degree.

This morning I was making some more adjustments to keep the temp down and knocked into his egg. It rolled and hit the counter hard enough to crack his shell. I've seen crack repairs in my research--using nail polish and wax--and I was mentally ransacking my house for nail polish when I realized that blood was coming out of the crack. His membrane was ruptured and the crack extended all the way around the egg.

After standing there frozen for another second, I accepted that I had to let him go. Our experiment is over for the moment. I didn't take any pictures--or even de-shell him--because (and I know this sounds ridiculous--but I was too upset. I know it's just an egg, but aren't we all at some point?

I've already sent an email to see if any of junior's "siblings" are still available and hopefully our experiment will continue soon. In the meantime, I'm feeling both very sad and very stupid. :-(

UPDATE 2:50PM --> Three more eggs are on the way! They should be here by noon. My plan is to distract my daughter this evening and sneak the new eggs into the incubator tomorrow. This is going to seem like an usually long three weeks to her. ;-)

The home stretch

Tomorrow we are officially in our third week of our egg's three week gestation. It's the home stretch and I'm way too excited. Junior's activity level is definitely much lower--but that may just be because he (or she, hopefully) is getting a little crowded in there. I'm also getting condensation on the inside of the incubator lid suddenly that I'll have to ask the folks on the forum about. Wouldn't want junior to get moldy. :-o