The Chicken Saga: Fear Deflated

Hello, out there!

I cannot access my photos right now, so I'm going to have boring posts til I get that remedied.  Sorry!  But I have a story to tell, and it can't wait any longer. **Remedied!

As you know, our chickens were having WORM ISSUES.  Blech.  My evidence of worms was what I assumed were worm eggs on the outside of my girls shells.  No other searches turned up results, but I felt pretty sure about the worm egg stuff.  However, after two dewormings, I was still seeing worm eggs on the outside of the shells.  My chicken world was caving in, and capsizing on me.

But.

One day I collected an egg with "worm eggs" but this time the eggs weren't all uniform in size.   I began to wonder if they really WERE worm eggs after all.  Shane and I did an internet search, and discovered that:

MY CHICKENS NEVER HAD WORMS IN THE FIRST PLACE!

All said and done, I'm glad.  It was a big hassle and pain, and here I've thrown away many good eggs and put my chickens through meds without needing to, but there is something SO comforting about them not having anything gross connected to my breakfast.  And on the bright side, I was able to donate the eggs that were laid while the chickens were medicated to Wildlife West, as the management said there would be no issues since their animals are regularly dewormed, anyway.  =)

I have a fun piece of news; we have a Mother among our biddies.  It's Lucas's hen named Crystal.  She's been trying to hatch out unfertilized eggs, but I acquired some fertilized ones and she's sitting on them.  We'll see by the weekend if the eggs will really hatch and if she'll be a mommy.  If the eggs don't hatch or the babies all die, then I'll get some new baby chicks from the feed store and tuck a couple under her and see what she does with that.  I need a couple new girls and maybe one or two to replace my egg-eating, free-loading girl.  

Oh yeah, and I built another coop.  It's an amazing study in function and size.  Teeny.  3x4 feet and a foot off the ground and the top has hinges that I lift up to check for eggs.  All I need it for is a sleeping roost and a spot to lay eggs in while I keep the other chickens separate from the new Mommy and her potential babies.  My egg-eating girl already ate one of the fertilized eggs, so I had to separate them.  Rascal!

And that is the continuation of the saga!