Chooks and the Danger of Being a Weekend Warrior

My friend is chicken mad. When you visit her home you'll find her kitchen full of paraphernalia and literature pertaining to this fluffy little barnyard critter. With three large coops on her property and her latest addition of ducks to the menagerie of birds there was no doubting that when I went searching for her birthday present I definitely wasn't stumped as to what interested her - chooks! At her thirtieth birthday celebrations she was excitedly telling me about her new brood that were squirreled away up in the kitchen in her incubator. Forty eggs!!! So when these baby chicks began to hatch, we decided we'd love to see these guys emerge into this great world too.

So after swimming lessons Tuesday morning we visited my chooky mad girlfriend and although we didn't see any actual hatching but we still learnt a bit about our poultry friends. We watched a video there that Chookie Girl took, which was amazing, so we found a real time vid of a chicken hatching to share.



It sure is sweet to watch them emerge!

When her first baby hatched he squeaked and squeaked for company and couldn't get dry properly either. Chooky Girl placed her fluffy piglet in with him and after the baby had instinctively snuggled up real close, he dried out in no time!

I never knew that a baby chick hatching was such a messy business too. Baby chicks have a small hard bump on the end of their beak which they use to peek open the top of their egg. After the chick emerges wet and slimy with the umbilical cord and part of the embryo sack still attached to them you can see inside the empty egg shell little red veins of blood that once fed the chick whist it was growing.

Can you see the embryo sack still attached and sitting in the palm of the hand? This falls away within a few hours of hatching.

We also found that these chicks are hard wired for survival. We simulated a mother hen sitting upon her brood by carefully cupping our free hand over the top of the chick who then went to sleep! Pretty handy in times of danger!

We also learnt that as the time draws near for the chickens to hatch (after only 21 days of incubating!) the humidity around the egg needs to increase dramatically and that if we were to feel around the eggs under a broody hen at this time the feathers are damp and clammy.

Sometime in the next few days I hope to get my boys and I off to the library so Kangaroo in particular can do some more 'research' on chickens,

So that was Tuesday, which was great, but Tuesday night, well, that wasn't so great. I joined a touch football team three weeks ago in an effort to introduce some aerobic exercise regularly into my life and Tuesday nights are the games. All day I'd been looking forward to having a great run. Five minutes into the game I leapt to catch a high pass and as my fingertips grazed the ball, my feet came back in contact with the ground and my left ankle gave way with a loud 'pop' audible to everyone on the field. My ankle had rolled outwards and my foot was sitting neatly facing inwards. Sitting on the field grasping my foot I definitely struggled to contain myself. I really could have just balled but you know, that would have been way too embarrassing!!!. The pain was intense but I did manage to hobble off the field to a waiting ice pack. It's funny the thoughts that swirled through my head as I sat on the side of the field icing my ankle, things like, thank goodness I did the full house clean today, how on earth am I going to cook tea on Wednesday night and how sad and frustrated I felt at not being able to go to Zen Do Kai on Wednesday night!

Today I've tried to remain sitting on the couch and 'rest' - a few up and downs at least, but what mother can resist her boys - diligently applying the RICE method (rest, ice, compression, elevation) I can see that the despite this the outside of my ankle has completely disappeared under the swelling! This means sadly that not only is Zen Do Kai off the cards but quite probably Mr E's and my first Tango class scheduled for this Saturday with some other very brave friends is no go too.

As for dinner, I find myself lucky to have an extremely kind and thoughtful friend who came to play for a while with her little ones and also cooked a beautiful vegetarian meal for us all. For this I am so thankful. Thankful for beautiful friends.

It's times like these that my mother likes to remind me how dangerous sports can be! I'm sure when I eventually get round to letting her know inevitably the little irritating remark regarding the danger of being a Weekend Warrior's will sneak into the conversation. Injuries really are few and far between fortunately for me and are definitely nowhere near frequent enough to exclude sport from my life.

To my mother I say, this Weekend Warrior just can't wait to get back out on the field again!