Day 18 problems

We think Franklin might have died this morning. We are still not sure though. We're gonna give him a few more days. This morning around 8 I woke up to turn him. I also wanted to check and see how he was doing. While candling the egg I discovered that we was moving very slow. I put him back in the incubator and lowered the light. (I had also discovered that it felt a bit to warm in the incubator. warmer than usual.) 2 hours later, I went to check him again and he just wasn't moving. I don't know what to do. Please pray for us. I need him to be ok.

Day 17

WOW, he is getting big!!
Check t out.



I even have a video this time. He is moving around a lot now. 2 more weeks!! I'm sooo excited!!




Good Night Franklin!

Day 16

ok, when candling Franklin today, it was kind of hard to find him. You can't really see him well in these pictures. he looks like a dark squiggly line shape. See? I'm gonna choose not to be worried right now. This is just another day of development. I know I've felt like a dark squiggle on some days myself.


on a brighter note, i have pond pictures. I didn't really do much today to it. I just covered the outer lining of the tarp with leftover dirt. It looks a little murky right now because I had just added some gravel before I took this picture. (I was running out of daylight..) I don't want to use a filter because I have no way to power it from that far away from the house. I still need some aquatic plants and some fish to add to the pond so I can have an ecosystem out there but I'll try and get to that tomorrow or the next day. If you have any suggestions on where in the DFW area I can get some of these items for a cheap price, I would REALLY appreciate it. Hopefully it should be done before Tuesday. i got to go back to school then. I really enjoyed building this pond so far. i think I'll try and make a few more if this one goes well. :-)
I hope Franklin will like it. I wonder how old he has to be before i introduce him to it.

Goodnight Franklin

Day 15

YAY!! CONGRATS TO US!!! We are half way there Franklin!! :-)
Today I built a backyard water feature. it's more like a mini pond. It's knee deep and about 5ft long. i think it should be big enough for a gosling. Tomorrow my sister and I are going to get some aquatic plants and some fish to put in the pond so we can make an ecosystem. This morning I asked my mom if I could build a water feature in the back yard because there was nothing really out there. She said sure. :-) Even though she doesn't know what its completely for yet, she loves it. I've been wanting to do something with the back yard anyway. I had to start somewhere. next I'm gonna try and plant some better grass and maybe some bamboo. We'll see how it all goes. I'm post a picture of the 'pond' when it's completed. Tonight is just is a blue tarp in a hole in the ground with rocks on the bottom. oh, and there is a lot of water too.
:-)


Goodnight Franklin!! I'm gonna take good care of you.

Day 14

Man, he sure is a wiggly thing. It's so cute to watch. I'll try and get a video up as soon as I can. This is just sooo exciting!!


:-)
Goodnight Franklin

Day 13

Today is the first day that HE MOVED!!! I'm so happy! He was moving a lot today.
:-)

Goodnight Franklin! get some rest..

Day 12

Looking good eh?
Kat and I got to putting together another incubator box tonight. I think it's gonna last longer than the first box did. Take a look.


G'night Franklin, hope ya like your new digs.

Day 11

So tired I am... I've been soo stressed out this last week that my neck won't turn without causing severe pain... fun... Well anyway, Franklin is growing right on schedule. My mother's 25 anniversary of turning 30 was today, so Happy Birthday to her. :-)
Katrina and I still haven't changed Franklin's box but we will really soon. We found a small box that will work so all we have to do now is put it together.


I know in this picture the bold 'F' on it's side looks strange but that is just the side of the shell that was facing up when we took the picture. When we found franklin we wrote an 'F' on the top of the egg so we would know where the top was. But look how big Franklin is getting!!!
Sleep Tight Franklin!

Day 10

Houston, we have double digits!! We've made it to day 10!! yay! Today is the day before my mothers birthday, today we watched the series finale of LOST, and today I was sick. katrina and i still haven't made another cardboard box to put Franklin in. We'll hopefully get to that tomorrow. Well anyway, here is our newest updated picture. Lets see how our fine pre-feathered friend is doing.

Looking good Franklin!! Goodnight!

Day 9

So far so good. I think the cardboard box we have Franklin in isn't gonna take much more humidity. We're gonna need to make another one pretty soon. Franklin has developed a lot today. I think he has an eye or something new. There is a dark spot in the darker middle area. See?


:-)

Goodnight Franklin!

Day 8

OK wow, Franklin is improving really quickly. :-) I'm happy. Nothing really happened today. I fell asleep in the late afternoon and didn't wake up till just now. (5:30 am) When i woke up I realized that I had forgotten to update this site. Katrina didn't do it either so here I am. I just can't believe how fast Franklin is growing. I think he doubled in size from yesterday already.
well I'm going back to sleep now.
Good Night Franklin.. again..

Day 7

Day 7 is finally here!!! So i found out that my worries of yesterday have turned into joy. Those red circles in the egg weren't blood rings, just the veining process. which is the next step in development. here is a picture of what we found tonight.

isn't that neat?!? I guess the edited picture from day 5 was just neat looking and wasn't actually showing me what was inside. oh well, this is what it should be looking like anyway. in this next picture you can see him better.

This is cool! I'm sooo happy that we've gotten this far. but now I have to study for a music theory test i have in the morning.
Good night Franklin, may you get more rest than I will tonight.

Day 6

I know that day 7 is a big milestone on if Franklin will survive. Tonight has got me really worried though. The humidity has been slowly going down so we re hydrated the wash cloths and put them back in the incubator. I knew we had to change them sooner or later so now i know that it has to be every 4 days. I just hope that the levels of humidity haven't put Franklin in jeopardy. Tonight when candling the egg i found something new. I don't know much about what the egg is supposed to look like during the stages of development so I don't know if this is something I should be worried about. what do you think?


Do you see the red rings in the middle of the egg? Are those supposed to be there? I've read up on something that can occur called "blood rings" but they look different than this. I guess I'm gonna wait and see how things turn out but i have to say that i'm kind of worried about this. Please let me know what you think.
hope you're doing alright Franklin, good night.

Annie



(*UPDATE*: I was told by the awesome people at the back yard chickens forum that this is 'veining'. this is what is supposed to happen, so i'm not so worried anymore. got to go to school now.
ttyl)

Day 5

ok, this is soooo awesome!! I just discovered something. thanks to the photo editing tools of picnik.com, i think I can see Franklin!!! ok this first photo is one of the picture I took while candling the egg today. (Day 5)


now this next image i edited alot on picnik.com. i just wanted to be able to enhance the image to see if there was anything i missed when looking at the egg with the naked eye. well looky here what I found.

can you see him? the head and the beak are at the right side of the dark red parts of the egg. I might be just seeing things, but I'm just getting more and more excited about this everyday!!
:-)

Goodnight Franklin!! I can't see you now!!

Day 4

Everything is looking good so far. I got a LED flashlight for candling today. It really paid off. I can see what is in there better now. Take a look at this view from the top of the egg. he is really in there!! I'm just sooo happy right now.
G'night Franklin

Day 3

Alright, day three went on with no problem. Temp is normal, humidity is at 53 which means it is rising. I would like it to get around 55 but i can live with anything 50-55. I'm not picky. today I thought a lot about why I was doing this. However lame this might sounds, I really like this new feeling of purpose. I'm doing something to help another living creature without expecting anything in return. I'm sad that I can't tell my mother about this new revelation. She and I are really close and it's not easy from me to hide something from her. I just can't not help this egg. He had no one and now he has Me and Katrina. I know that when the day comes that i have to tell my mother about what I've been keeping in the closet, I will regret hiding Franklin the egg from her. But what I wont regret is this whole experiment, this adventure, and this opportunity. I love being able to share all this experience with my sister as well.
Good night franklin, I have school in the morning.


(Disclamer: I would just like to thank picnik for giving me the tools to edit this picture so you can see the veins better.)

Day 2

Today was the day I was REALLY worried on if little Eggbert would survive. My sister and I had to drive from Kemp to DFW. Now normally I wouldn't worry about driving such a long way but this time we had an extra passenger. I didn't really know what we should use to transport the egg so I had Katrina hold him the whole way. I thought body heat would keep him warm. Well, he seems to be ok. We stopped at petsmart on the way home to pick up the heating lamp, the thermometer, and the hydrometer. Got home in the early afternoon, so mom was still asleep. Katrina and I fixed the incubator in my closet and then announced to the house that we were home. So tonight I took this candled shot around 11. here you can see the air bubble and(if you look closely) some of the veins. (I found a better camera.) After updating you on everything that's been happening, I believe all I can do now is sleep.
Good Night Franklin.

Day 1

So, I read about this thing called candling an egg. I am going to be keeping a daily record of Franklin's growth. This was taken yesterday around 10 pm. If this egg was infertile it would be almost clear and bright and empty. This egg obviously has something in it. What you can't see in this blurry picture is the clear veins along the egg and the air bubble on the right side of the egg. but what you CAN see is the dark mass in the middle. Franklin is in there and it's our job to get him ready to get out!!!!!!!!! :-)

Our Homemade Incubator

Well, from what information Katrina and I could gather, (and what we could afford without our mother noticing) we have macgyvered our own homemade egg incubator. We have placed a small cardboard packing box inside of a bigger cardboard box. As you can we flipped the box on it's side and used it as a shelter to clamp the heating lamp on. The lamp is using a 100 watt bulb and it has a dimmer installed.
In the smaller packing box, we've placed heat resistant plastic wrap over 2 halves of the box. there are air holes in the plastic wrap to allow air flow. We decide to cover both halves of the box with the plastic wrap to keep the humidity at a constant high level. We also didn't want the water vapors to shatter the light bulb.
For humidity we have added 2 damp wash cloths. We also added a thermometer and hydrometer to the smaller box to keep track of our levels. Temp is around 98-99 degrees fahrenheit and humidity levels are around 50. We've worked out a schedule and have been turning the egg 5 times a day. An odd number so the egg isn't resting on one side all night every night. This all I know to do at this point in the process. Any advice would be helpful.

Franklin's Beginning

Hello, My name is Annie (19) and my sister (Katrina-16) and I are trying to hatch an egg. This all started when Kat and I went fishing in Kaufman, TX with our grandfather. He found a new goose egg (just been born within the hour) and we decided to try and hatch the egg. This was on the 14th of May (yesterday). My grandfather told us he has been wanting a new goose for his pond but doesn't want to mess with the whole process of raising the gosling. SO, Kat and I are to incubate the egg, and (if it hatches) raise the gosling until it's old enough to live out in the country.
My sister and I live in the city, and our mother isn't a pet person, so this will be a tricky issue. I think she will be surprised to find out what we've been doing. I am not sure if she will be mad about it. She let me try something like this before when I was a kid. I found a blue bird egg and she let me try and hatch it. I keep telling myself that 'She has let me do this before, i don't see why she would have a problem now...'
Anyway, right now we will try and make an incubator from information we have found on the internet. If the egg hatches, we'll jump off that bridge when we get to it. This blog is here as a way to keep track of what has been happening. I will be showing daily pictures of improvement and would welcome any advise anyone can offer. Today is day 2 since we've had the egg and we've decided to name him Franklin Eggbert Jr. We'll see if he makes it.