We are hatching chicks!!!

"STITCH"

We are hatching chicks at our house!  I started with 20 eggs and 15 hatched!  I wanted to post about something really awesome that happened with chick number six.  She started hatching a day early and to be honest I just don’t think she was ready.  In any case, she started making her entrance into the world on Sunday, June 3rd.  I was really excited as me or the kids had ever seen this before.  

 Well, as she came out of her shell I noticed there was a problem.  I picked her up as she was almost all the way out.  Then, when she separated from the shell her umbilical cord pulled away to reveal her belly had not closed up all the way before hatching.  She immediately started bleeding out as I held her.  I stuck my finger over the whole and pressed gently to stop the bleeding.  Her blood was pooling inside my palm and seeping through my fingers onto the floor.  I really thought she was going to bleed to death.  The bleeding did stop but every time she chirped her insides would come outside the hole..  Since the bleeding had stopped momentarily I propped her on a towel knowing she wasn’t going to move due to all her blood loss. 

  I researched for a moment on the computer about her ‘belly button’ because I really did not know if that is what it was.  Once I established that she did in fact have a belly button and me closing up the hole would not damage her potential egg production or bowels I decided her best chance of living would be for me to sew up the hole and pray I didn’t hit any of her organs.  

I grabbed the smallest needle I could find, heated it with a lighter to kill bacteria, grabbed some thread and did my best.  I can say that it is NOTHING like sewing on a button, nope, buttons don't chirp and you don't have to keep tucking intestines back inside them. 
Well, I finally finished, applied Neosporin and bound her with gauze in a way that she could not move because when she chirped her insides applied quite a bit of pressure to that area.  Now, it’s been 9 days and I’d like to introduce you to the chick we call “Stitch”.  Which I’d like to add that I think is actually a boy.  We eat the roosters around here, so I’m not sure how I feel about that.  I don’t know if this rooster will ever see its demise by these hands as I just can’t stop thinking about how hard he had to fight to live.  Either way, I’m hoping I’m wrong and that it’ll turn out to be a hen and feed me lots of wonderful eggs as payment for being my first chick patient.  Overall it was an AMAZING experience!!!!