Another Brilley ...

I've lost another Brilley chick - the smallest one with the black wings - it was always a bit runty but seemed to be strong, so I don't know whats caused it.


I don't know if they're from bad breeding, my bad care of them or if they have some infection - but the other 4 CCL chicks are all fine.

Another chick died :(

Another one of the Brilley chicks has died :(
It looked like it hadn't been eating. I have no idea why the second one has died, hope its not contagious and that the others don't get it.
I've put some Poultry Tonic in their water to hopefully give them a boost. I was thinking about separating the Brilley chicks and the CCL's, but if it is contagious its too late now :/

I emailed the breeder and he said it sounds like cocci, but they haven't been near any contaminated birds or equipment so I don't think it is, unless it can be passed down in eggs.

Day 10

Its day 10 and the chicks are doing fine. I cleaned them out and switched them onto wood shaving instead of the non-slip mat and they seemed a bit confused!

Brilley Silver + White chicks.

All the chicks together

Its tiny compared to the others! :)

The 4 Cream Crested Legbar chicks together, Fry (male) is at the front.

4 CCL's - Pox, Nugget, Purkinje + Fry

1st Driving lesson

We broke up from school today and I've just had my first driving lesson and it went quite well.
We drove to a quiet road and did some commentary driving, talked through all the controls, adjusted the seat, steering wheel and mirrors then spoke through how the clutch works and things like that - intentionally stalled the car to see how it happened and then I drove the car a bit.
I drove up a straight road, pulled in, then again but with going around a parked car, and then I drove up the road, going into second gear and pulling up behind a parked car.
He asked how I thought it'd gone and I said I thought I was too heavy handed with the foot pedals, and he said I was better than most people, so Lewis is pleased :D

Chicks ar home :D

I bought the chicks home this afternoon and they are all fine and in the breakfast room :D

Up to 7 chicks

Just been to school to check the chicks and a water pipe in Biology has burst!

The chicks are fine, the one that was pipping yesterday (in the video) hatched, another hatched and there is an egg that has pipped and should be out tomorrow. The one from yesterday and the pipped one yesterday have gone into the brooder with the rest of the chicks.

The Brilley Blues are smaller chicks, and they're meant to be autosexing, but I can't see any difference, and I thought they were meant to be blue chicks aswell :lol: - I'll find out.

Up to 5 chicks

The first Brilley Blue chick has hatched this morning, and there is another that is pipping.

I recorded a video of the chick and you can see it breathing inside the egg :D

The CCL chicks are all fine, they seem to have grown loads already! Fry has already got litte wing feathers :)

Up to 4 ...

The 4th chick hatched during the night and I think its a girl, so hopefully we have 1 boy and 3 girls.
We've named them; Blue is called Fry, Yellow is called Nugget, Pink is called Purkinje and th Orange one is called Pox :)
In the brooder

Purkinje

In Biology

Fry :D

3 Chicks

2 more hatched today. The one that hatched yesterday is a male, and the 2 from today are females. There's still one pipping and yet to hatch.
Some photos:
Empty egg shell:

Arjun + a female chick:
Me + Phillipa:

Male chick:

3 chicks in the brooder:

First chick :D

3 eggs pipped earlier during Biology and then I went on a trip and got back just before 4 o'clock - and the first chick was just out of its shell XD

Hatcher

The polyhatch seems to be working well, and we put the first batch of eggs in at 9am. We went back at lunchtime to check the temperature and someone had turned it off at the wall and the eggs felt cold! The temperature was down in the 20's and should be at 37 degrees :(
We quickly put them back in the original incubator while this one heated up and then put them back in. It was a maximum of 4 hours that they were cold for, hopefully they will be ok.
We candled the eggs and got rid of the 2 CCL infertile eggs and one infertile BB egg.

We have a webcam set up and is running on the school network, but can't be viewed outside school which is a bit pointless as you can just go and look at them, but we're going to have them streamed live on the plasma screens around school.

New Hatcher

I went to school on the way back home from Nottingham just to sort the chicks out. I thought I was taking my incubator in for the first batch of chicks to use as a hatcher but school have managed to borrow one from another local school.
Its a Brinsea Polyhatch (which we used to use at the farm all the time) and they're usually good and hold their temperature well. I turned it on and have left it running over the weekend, hopefully it'll keep its temperature and will be ok :)

VetSim - Day 4

The rest of the Marine Mammal Medic Course was today - the practical part.
Me, Chris and Jen were all in different groups today, but it was fine. I started off with the dolphin.
We talked a bit about the situation, what to check for and signs to look out for. We put some KY jelly over its eyes to keep them moist, put a sheet over it to protect it from the sun and then started to lift it. We rolled up the tarpaulin on one side, rolled the dolphin and slid the tarp underneath, we rolled the dolphin back and pulled the tarp out from underneath so the model dolphin was in the middle of the tarp and all lifted together.
I lay down on the tarp and people lifted me and walked a little bit to simulate walking to the sea ready to be refloated.
After the dolphin was the seal. Seals don't need KY Jelly on their eyes, or a cloth, but you walk up along the side of the seal with a towel and in one go you have to jump on its back, cover its head with the towel and hold its neck down so it can't bite you. Then you have to check it for lesions on its flippers, checks its mouth and eyes and then we lifted it. It had a knack to it and the seal was really heavy - I can imagine it being really hard with a live seal as it would be trying to wriggle out and bite you.
Next and last was the whale. The situation was that the whale had been stranded on the beach and we'd been given permission from the vet to refloat it. We had to do similar to the dolphin, and roll up the pontoon, roll the whale and put the pontoon under the whale and take it out from the other side. Next the pontoon sheet is clipped onto the floats of the pontoon and the pontoon is inflated with compressed gas. It needs to be done slowly as not to alarm the whale. A female sitting next to the head of the whale is meant to be calming for the whale aswell.
After it was all inflated, we lifted the whale. We took it all apart and did the same thing again without the instructors telling us what to do, to check that we all knew what we were doing.
We left Nottingham just after one o'clock and got back at around half past two.

VetSim - Day 3

Today at VetSim was all Animal Sessions.
Another start at 9am but this time with Parrots and Macaws. They were all rescue parrots and the man did a talk about them and about how to care for them and then we did a quiz. Some of the things were really interesting, like there are over 300 breeds of parrot!
After Parrots we moved onto Skunks & Meerkats (from the same place as the parrots, again from Birmingham!). There was a group of 4 Meerkats all in a run, then a baby and a male with 3 legs in a different cage. They again were rescued animals and we were allowed to stroke the male but not hold him because he was vicious with other people. Other people held the baby and she was ok with people, although she did bit one person.The skunks were passed around and didn't smell as bad as I was expecting, a bit like a wet rabbit. The adults had their scent glands removed, but a law was passed 2 years ago banning it, so the baby still had his. After that we went over to Large Constrictors, there was a smaller one which was passed around and we tried to listen to its heartbeat. Then the bigger one came out and we held it then put it over our shoulders, it was stronger than I expected. Then we went to Eagles and Vultures which was interesting. They were all fed on cockerel chicks coming from the commercial hatching industry, but had their yolk sacs removed because they are high in calcium.

We went and had lunch then went to the Snapping Turtles. We were taught how to handle them, draw a triangle from the back legs to the middle of the back and thats the only place you can touch then, as they have long necks and bite. You pick them up by the tail and support underneath.
Afterwards was Canine Blood Bank, which I didn't know existed, dogs donate bloog which can be used by vets in blood transfusions. I had to leave early and miss the next session (Elephant Conservation) because I had my Mock Interview. I think it went well and I could answer everything she asked me - she said it was good and that I had well thought out answers.
I was back in time for Anatomy which was good, they described the difference in different animals and different breeds and problems we as humans have created for animals, for examples the breathing of Pugs and Boxer dogs and birth of Bulldogs.

Some people left at 5 and the rest of us had dinner then went and started the Marine Mammal Medic Course. It was all lectures today, Biology Of Cetaceans and Seals, Cetacean Strandings and Seal Rescue - they were all given by the BDMLR (British Divers Marine Life Rescue).

VetSim - Day 2

Today we got up at 8 and went for breakfast to be in Clinical Sessions for 9 o'clock. I was in group A4 with Chris, Jen (from school) and Lucy (from the farm) and we started off with suturing - the first one I did wasn't perpendicular to the wound but I thought the rest were good.
Then we moved onto CPR which was good - they said it was rare in a vets and only 5% of patients in a vets will be successful, half of which will die in the next 48 hours! They mentioned it in a lambing situation which I suppose I have done successfully :)
Next was X-Rays, we had to look at them as a group and identify organs and any problems we could see, but there were no standard or healthy X-Rays to compare them against, which I think would have helped.
After a break we had an Ultra-sound session and they had a look at Chris' heart! Ultra-sound is becoming more popular and is a god diagnostic tool but not used on its own.
Another break and then onto Keyhole Surgery. It was a lot harder than it looked but we had an 'appendix' which we had to put 2 loops onto to stop the blood supply and then cut between them - we did it and were the first group to do it all day!! :D

Next we had a lunch break for an hour and went to Husbandry Sessions. We started off with Alpacas, the man bought 3 males with him and just spoke through everything, I didn't realise they needed so many vitamin supplements and injections.

Horses were next and the Nottingham Mounted Police were there. They spoke through a bit of husbandry then we all listened to their heart beats and their stomaches - one of the horses had an irregular heartbeat.

Reptiles were next - and it was a man from Proteus in Birmingham. We got to handle snakes and a bearded dragon :)

After Reptiles we went onto Arachnids - it was a slideshow which was interesting and had loads of info in it and he had some shedded spider skins at the front that we could touch but we couldn't touch any live spiders which I would have probably made it better.

Then we went outside to Small Animals, there was a dog and we talked through how to check over a dog from nose to tail. There were 2 chickens! which was good :P and a rabbit aswell but we weren't allowed to touch that.

We had a free session then a Birds of Prey session - also a man from Birmingham. He spoke through a bit about them and let us all fly a little kestrel. There was a 4 week old Snowy Owl chick there that was really cute and let us all stroke it.

After that we watched a Birds of Prey Display, where they did tricks, flew up onto the roof and back down between the man's legs and things like that.

In the evening we want to a Charity Lecture: "Liking & Sexual Attraction" which was quite good, and some things were funny.

VetSim

I've been at VetSim at Nottingham Uni this week. Jen drove us up on Tuesday and we came back on Friday (I'm writing this at home after the week).It was a really good course, completely different to Vet-Medlink because it was a practical course, not lecture based.
When we got there they gave us scrubs and a stethoscope, I bought the upgraded one with 2 tubes and more interchangeable heads.
We had an introduction to VetSim then a keyhole surgery lecture with the same man that did The Edge at Vet-Medlink. Keyhole is better because its a shorter recovery time and less invasive, but there is more risk of a problem as you can only see such a small space, and its a longer operation.
In the evening we had an ethics lecture which made you think quite about different situations, then we had a lecture about the Use of the Stethoscope until 11 with a lot of information about different heart beats in different animals - the one thing I thought was strange, was that we didn't touch our stethoscopes during the whole lecture!

Candled

We candled the eggs today and I think 2 of each of the breeds are infertile as they are clear. There was one CCL egg which looked ok, but I couldn't see the viens, hopefully it'll be fertile.

We might be using my incubator to hatch the first batch, but it isn't PAT tested so we need that doing, and we're getting a webcam set up to record them hatching.

London and BodyWorlds

We went to London today with school + it was really good :)
We got the trin in to Euston, all got on the tube but one ... Miss Knowles didn't get on the train in time so we had to wait at the tube station for the next one. Then we walked to the Natural History Museum for a few hours, there was loads of little "I didn't know that" things as you walked round, and we managed to see everything. After that we all got on a tube, but the wrong one!, so had to get off at the next station and switch tubes to get to South Kensington where we went for a meal in Giraffe.
We managed to get on the right tubes this time and went to North Grenwich to walk to the O2 to the BodyWorlds exhibition. It was really good.
As soon as you walk in, there are foetuses at each week of development, it was amazing to see the growth, but quite scary to see how developed the baby is and they can still be aborted :/
Then there was a pregnant woman with the baby visible which was really interesting to see a cross section.
Then it moves up in age up until old age and as you go around there are examples of diseases and illnesses showing what happens to the body parts and where.
It was really strange to thing that these were real people, with names and a life story behind them, but you don't get told about the person as its an exhibition about the bodies and not the people. I bought a DVD of the making afterwards - really well worth going to :D