I received two shipments of Welsummer Eggs today, one from Tennessee and one from Alabama. There are 5 REALLY DARK eggs in the Alabama shipment and all of the rest of the eggs in both shipments are a medium brown. Most of the eggs were very large, a few were more like a medium sized egg and a few were a bit more longer. Overall, it was a nice looking bunch of eggs and I am well pleased that even with the different packing methods only one egg from each shipment were cracked AND both shippers included extra eggs. So I am putting 34 in the incubator on 4/12 with the state AL or TN and we will see if we can keep the chicks separated as they hatch out. One group travelled 5 days and the other only travelled 2 days. We have 2 of the AL eggs, and 10 of the TN eggs left in my friends incubator, the rest were duds, didn't grow, or bacteria green slime, or scrambled or broken air sacs due to shipping and possibly older eggs sent as extras. Really don't know WHY they are bad, but that is 24 bad ones so far out of 36 shipped. So we have a week left to see if we get some Welsummers! Cross your fingers and HOPE! About a week to go yet.
This will be our FIRST experience getting them hatched and its over at my girlfriends incubator! So she's in charge.
Since I got hit with 'Chicken Math Attack' and 'happened to win' another auction, she loaned me her hova bator manual incubator. It has a heating element and I got a thermometer/humidity too so I will just need to wash it up and get it turned on.
The eggs I got from Virginia showed up in RECORD TIME, thought they would be in Friday and showed up Thursday 4/14. So they will go into the 'hova bator' Friday 4/15 morning! Those eggs are from SQ lines and were 14 LF, 10 bantams as they were laying, so it will be a 'fun' hatch to see what I end up with!
The LF are: 5 Black Australorp, 3 Wheaten Ameraucana, 1 Silver Laced Wyandotte, 2 Buff Leghorn, 1 Black Langshan, 2 Egyptian Fayoumi. The faoumi's will be able to 'fend for themselves' out at the farm, so hopefully they can help protect the group that is out free ranging in the pasture this summer and overwinter well at the barn!
The bantams are: 4 Barred Rocks, 2 Black Wyandottes, 2 Blue/Black Wyandottes, and 2 BrownRed/Birchen Wyandottes. As of 4/26 1 Blue/Black Wyandotte, 1 Black Wyandotte, 1 Birchen Wyandot, and 2 Barred Rock Cochin eggs are all duds. On 4 of them the yolks were broken. Nothing started in any of those 5. That leaves 7 that might be growing, there are black shadows inside. About a week and a half to go yet.
Now I am just mainly hoping there are no explosions in the bator and I'll open them up on day 24!
I'm also picking up 2 Light Sussex hens, 1 year old and from breeder lines. And from hatchery, an Australorp and a Golden Laced Wyandotte that are 2 yrs old and laying eggs. One of the Sussex is on eggs: Ameraucanas, Welsummers, and EE's, so we will have to see what happens there as well.
Don't mind me, I'm busy building chicken runs for the new hens, cleaning out that bator and expanding the growing flock of NHR/Golden Comets from TSC--they are 3-4 weeks old and in a 8x10 area of the basement! The window is OPEN and they have a brooder light they can get under if they get cold. They are all feathered in and they need to get some transitioning so they can go outside soon!
We don't plant here until Mother's Day, so we will still have some outdoor frosts. The brooder room temp is down to 60 with the window open in the daytime and I will close it to a crack for the nighttime.
They are on a plastic tarp, have a roosting area, the waterers are staying A LOT cleaner, some boxes with pine shavings on their sides near the light they can go huddle up in. And they aren't wasting as much feed either. Got all the smelly cardboard boxes GONE and air quality is much better.
Bonnie in Ohio
