Sad News, No Chicks...

We gave the eggs that had some promise an extra couple of days, and there were still no chicks peeping out. Kurt made a candler out of a bright bulb and an old metal part from the store that had a small opening. In the bathroom, it gave a pretty good view into the eggs. I don't know if it is because of the brown color of the eggs that made it difficult to determine the size of the embryo inside or our inexperience, but we thought we had seven viable. So today the kids and I opened them all. There were six that seemed they had expired at about 7 to 10 days incubation. They were tiny, and we aren't sure why they looked larger on the candler. We went back and can't pinpoint anything that happened at 7 to 10 days to cause a disturbance. Then there was one that had gotten to the point that it was just about to absorb it's yolk sack, it was precious, had feathers and you could see the egg tooth. Again, not sure what could have happened that day. The kids took all this in stride, although were disappointed as were we. We don't regret being mother hens for 21 plus days, and know that nature certainly does it better, but wanted to try. For now the kids have decided to go the route of just getting some tiny chicks or day old chicks. We decided to do this after we get back from our vacations in June. So we are hunting for a chick source for Dominique hens! Hopefully they will be grown and laying some before it gets too cold...