Things can only get better!

so...the dawning of the New Year was not so good for us.We woke on New Years Day to find that Amé was dead in her festive box.On New Years Eve she got off the eggs, that she had been sitting on for nearly a month, quite a few times and appeared to have given up on them. Hen eggs take 21 days to hatch but Guinea Fowl eggs take 28 days so she had already sat a week extra. The eggs were due to hatch on New Years Day give or take a day or two because of Arke abandoning them after two days.There was no sign of them hatching and on New Years Eve we chased Amé back in for the night hoping that we would find signs of hatching in the morning...it was not to be.We buried Amé in our 'chook' cemetery and Will took the eggs and one by one broke them open to see what was inside. The first 7 still had yolks but the seventh had a chick in it and it was still moving though bundled up in it's egg sac. It looked pretty close to being ready to hatch too. He brought it in and we put it somewhere warm but it sadly died too. We have four still intact and we think one at least has a chick in it so we are keeping them warm in the hope that it will survive though the chances now are very slim.After the false start with Arke we were thinking that we might end up disappointed come New Year but we did not expect the outcome to be so bad. Poor Amé, she had survived the fox attack next door and was a feisty thing, always on her toes and ready to run. Her body was crawling with mites. We feel so bad that we chased her back in there the night before too.To top it all Will and I both had stomach pains all day and we have no idea where that came from and I had to pay a $250 speeding fine after being caught last month by an unmarked police camera car at the side of the road. Doh!Surely things can only get better.