Forums Quest 9: Flames of Fury

Hmm...

Well, not the best things have been happening. First off, my parents are saying I can't keep the birds in my room. They said that I wheeze a ton when I'm asleep. It's gotten better since I turned on the fan and stuff, so they're giving it another day. Also, my button quails are laying 6 hours later for 2 days straight. It doesn't really matter, we're not going to manually incubate any more. Tac was being very rude to Chickapee, so we moved him and added Tic.

On a brighter note, Ken loves us. He slept on my chest- it was so cute! Despite the incessant squeaking, we love him to death. KirbyII is also making a lot less noise. I'm thinking he's a she because of the motherly instincts.

At this point, that's all I have to say. This is one of those short entries. Well...bye.

-Roey

P.S.

The reason I made the title of this post what it is is because I'm playing a new game called Dragon Quest 9 and I asked where I could free my button quail on BYC. Literally, everyone started flaming me. Only a few people were nice. All I asked was a simple question and suddenly, I'm the witch of the ol' forum.

Metamoltosis

7:30pm

This is off-topic, but I'm just so excited. After coming back from a farm, I noticed two tarantulas in one vial. I looked closer, and saw that my tarantula molted! That's one surprise you can never get from birds. Yes, they offer much more, but they don't spontaneously become half an inch bigger after pushing themselves from old skin. Um...I bet that sounds kind of gross. I didn't expect it to be like that...

About my birds, the chick grew a ton larger! It's no wonder- I always see his/her head in the food bowl. I decided to name it Ken. Not as in Kenneth, as in chicKen. It may sound dumb, but this way the name is unisex. Ken got some feces on (let's just go with his) his head, so KirbyII tried to get it off. That can lead to no good! So, I took a wet paper towel and wiped his head clean. Ken follows KirbyII everywhere. If Kirby starts cleaning himself, so does Ken. If Kirby walks to the water bowl, Ken follows. When Kirby sleeps, Ken sleeps on top of him. It's so cute!

I'm assuming that, due to the stress, Chickapee lays every 26 hours rather than 24, so I should be expecting an egg at 8pm. Last time was 6pm, and before it would be 3:30-4. I'm just assuming that because Chickapee's biggest stress-causing event was when we moved her to a new cage, and she still laid an egg. So, I'm going to hope for the best.

Anyways, thanks for reading. I'm going to sign off early because not many things happen in half a day involving my birds. I did get to take a cute snapshot of Ken, though. Peace!

-Roey

'Tis a Jolly...uh...Midnight?

Time for the late-night post...

Well, my button quails laid eggs after all. At around 8pm, right before dinner, I saw the egg in my quails' food dish. You wouldn't believe my excitement. It was already starting to become cold at the time, but I put it in the incubator ASAP. Not like it would matter that much, though.

I caught the cutest pics of my chick too. He/she is so adorable! I still don't know what to name it, though. Please comment with your ideas. Originally, the chick was just supposed to be a little play-buddy for KirbyII, but there's no doubt that I would start loving him/her like I've never seen an animal in my life! So soft too. I just hope that the chick is a girl. Free eggs right from the chicken- what could be better!? Although, this is probably going to be the only one for a while and until further notice, our intentions are keeping him/her in the giant rabbit hutch after KirbyII moves out.

KirbyII's fur is very light, and I heard that a peahen's fur is lighter than a male's. This kind of stinks because Lazy (the other peachick that passed away) had darker fur. I kept telling my family, "Let's get the white peacock from Strombergs!" Well, a peahen is still pretty cool. It's having a peafowl that counts. That reminds me, we haven't held KirbyII even once today. We've been trying to hold KirbyII a lot so he/she would get used to human interaction, but something's been up lately and KirbyII keeps resisting and struggling around if held. I wouldn't take it too seriously; if I was held by some giant ogre I would freak out.

As for that BackYardChickens website, I'm thinking about entering the contest soon. I've been wanting to start this blog but never got around to doing so. Even though I don't have many viewers (if any), I know I will keep this active for any reason that I'll think of when I'm bored. It's not like the contest is going anywhere. Still, I would promote BYC forums either way. I got so much help from them.

Well, that's all for now. Thanks for reading.

-Roey

P.S.

I'm going to try and put a lot more pictures/videos/etc. in the upcoming posts.

Parasitism? Commensalism? No, mutualism.

I have some big news today.

Before I start, I may as well get the bad news over with. Due to the cage transfer, Chickapee stopped laying eggs. It's a shame because she just started and I was hoping for 3 fertile eggs. I want at least one egg. The worst part is that she may not start back up again for as long as 6 weeks.

Now for the good part. I saw my dad come home from work and ran outside. I'm always happy when my dad comes home. He gave me a big hug and said, "I saw these really cool halloween toys from Burger King. I know you think toys are childish, but I'm sure you'll like them." He handed me a brown paper bag with some holes in it and I looked inside. A little week-old chick looked back up at me and started chirping. I held it in my hand and it closed its eyes. After calling eight different feed stores that said they did not carry any birds anymore, this was an amazing surprise. The chick and KirbyII are getting along very well.

With no more squawking from KirbyII but the chick making even more noise, it seemed like there wasn't much of an advantage to this other than having a baby chicken. KirbyII nudged the chick to the food and he/she started eating right away. So, KirbyII has a friend, the chick has a "father", and I have another adorable pet. All's well that ends well.

-Roey

Building Blocks

Hello Readers,

This is the official first post of what will hopefully be an ongoing blog, "Birth of the Bird", that documents any peculiar behavior or big news relating to my birds. First, I have three button quails. One of them was born months ago (I never kept count) and the other two were born around July 9th. I also have a peachick that hatched on August 5th. I used to have two, but one died. We had to help him/her out of the egg and it was weak all its life. So, now we have one. A few days ago, our button quails started laying eggs. Now we have three eggs in the incubator. Today, we made a major revamp by moving the male and female button quails (Chickapee, a female cinnamon red-breasted and Tac, a male blue faced quail) into a bigger cage that prevents them from being able to bonk their heads as well as has room for the baby button quails to fit, but the bars are too close together for them to be able to slip through. At first, it seemed like a good plan. Unfortunately, Tic (male, born a day before Tac) is all alone in the original cage. Soon, once we hatch the button quail chicks and get a female, we will put her with Tic. By November, I should be expecting three eggs a day.

With the tragic loss of KirbyII's (our Indian Blue peachick) companion, he has been dying for attention. We put him in my room to stop the squawking, but now he throws a tantrum every time I leave the room. It gives me a warm feeling inside that I'm needed and a great excuse not to get out of the house. Erm, on a different note, I'm going to try and find a chick (this time, I just mean a baby chicken) that I hope will be a hen for KirbyII. My plans are, once KirbyII gets too big for his hutch, we will keep the chick inside it and collect the eggs to eat. The best part about that plan- no sperm! It would be impossible for the eggs to be fertile, which would make me not feel like I'm about to upchuck an egg from it. I'm still not too happy about eating a button quail egg that is very likely to be fertile, but I really want to know what they taste like. Plus, I heard that they're like popcorn when hard-boiled. You can just pop 'em in your mouth!

For you readers that are not on the BackYardChickens forums, you are probably wondering if I live on a farm. Well, just to steer away from legal issues, sure. Let's go with that :) . Ah, farm life. Speaking of BackYardChickens, anyone who has a bird should join that site. It is the best website you'll ever find in the history of the universe. The people there are very friendly and the website itself is loaded with information.

Before I finish this post, I'd like to add that I have another website. I rarely update it because I constantly upload tons of videos and/or pictures that I'm way too lazy to add. I may start back up again in 2011 or late Fall. The website is here.

Thanks For Reading,

Roey