Best April Fools

Yesterday Morning Kaci and I couldn't decide if we could hear a chick or not. I kept checking but didn't see any cracks in the eggs or any egg shell. By the time the boys had come home from school I decided I really could hear a chick and so we kept watching.

At 4:30pm I heard the egg roll on the mesh screen and sure enough there was an egg shell on the mesh. Within 30 minutes he was out. The kids got to watch most of it and Kaci and Jake thought it was gross when I pulled the egg shell out. It really is amazing how loud such a tiny little creature is.
When they are first born they are kind of scary looking. You wonder if they are really going to make it.

With in a few hours they normally start to fluff out and look like those adorable little chicks you see at IFA. Because, of the power outage this little guy took a little longer to get his cute fluff. When the power went out I thought the incubator would be fine as long as we kept the lid closed. Boy was I wrong with in 15 minutes the temperature dropped to 70 degrees. This is really bad for the eggs that haven't hatched and the chick that just hatched. Temperature is crucial. Tina happen to txt me to see if our power was out and I called her to say do you have any hand warmers or some way to heat this little guy up. (Our hand warmers got used up at the indoor barn this winter by our cute little girl.) They said yes so I drove up to get them. Andy also had a little power converter that he sent for me to try. Just as I was getting the hand warmers working the power came on. I thought we are ok. At 2:00amish I got up to check on the horse I thought was sick earlier and went to check on the chick. For some reason the temperature was still at 70 degrees and the baby chick was almost dead. So the "Mother Hen" instinct kicked in and I took the baby chick into my bedroom and held him close thinking this was his only chance to live. Within a half hour he was warming up and showing life. The temperature was back up to 99.6 degrees in the incubator so I put him back in and tried to go back to sleep. At 4:30 am the alarm rang for Dan and Jake Kareoka to go turkey hunting so I got up to check on the baby chick and he looked great. Jake said, " wow your house is pretty active at night." Dan said, "good job mother hen the horse is fine and you saved the chick, and we are all exhausted." I couldn't go back to sleep for a while and when the alarm went off for the boys to go to school I wanted to die. But from the next to pictures you can see my sleepless night paid off. April Fool's (Kaci named him) is alive and well. Now to see if any of his friends survived the power outage.

(Jake got his turke at 7:30 am it is turning out to be a great day)

This is our little April Fools Chick.