Quail Hatch Soon!

[2boys1homestead]

Hey All!

Well, this is my first time incubating in a DIY incubator I build myself. I've candled a few eggs and found non-fertilized as well as completely dark eggs (I imagine that means they are grown). It's Day #16 and they should be hatching soon! I thought I would share it with you as it happens! (If it happens).


I hope everything turns out well and I can show you all my new baby quails! First livestock on our homestead!

Ben

 

[Ameraucanas]

That is so great! They look very healthy. Are you going to keep all of them?

 

[2boys1homestead]

I'm shooting for 9 hens and 3 males. We'll see what happens. I'm keeping them in groups of 4 (1 male, 3 females) for hatching eggs. I plan on growing the flock a bit for meat birds and more laying hens.

 

[2boys1homestead]

We've got one chick out! Only took him about 2 hours from Pip to hatched completely.

Since he/she has gotten out, the other eggs have seemed to react to him and started rocking. I've counted about 6 more separate rocking eggs, so let's hope they all hatch!

 

[Del1977]

Good luck! Hatching day is always very eggciting! Mine are day 16 tomorrow but have seen only 6 out of 56 eggs wobble.

Has anyone else seen so few wobble but still had a good hatch rate?

We've hatch quail a few times now and find it unusual not to see more movement.

 

[2boys1homestead]

Now we're on Day #22 or #23 and we have 2 chicks out and 2 more hatching right now.

First chick was Day 20, second was Day 21 and we've had no activity for a couple days and now two more at once!

 

[Del1977]

Hopefully you will get a few more. Ours started hatching yesterday, with one last late arvo and 3 overnight. Have just had one more hatch and 6 pipped. Not very hopeful of a good hatch rate but your late hatches are giving me a bit more hope.

 

[2boys1homestead]

I totally forgot to update this!!

We had a total of 6 hatch. Number 6 died almost immediately after hatching in the night, we have no idea why. Number 5 got splayed legs so bad and so quickly that he did unmendable damage to himself, so we had to put him down. We have 4 total almost a month later and they are fully feathered! Pretty sure they are all females, which is good for eggs, but bad for breeding....we'll have to incubate again in the future.

 

[Del1977]

Yay for females I say. We are having the opposite problem and getting far too many males. And just make it harder, was about to sell 3 males once we were absolutely certain, but they got into a fight and pecked each others heads bald!!!

Grrr! Pet store won't buy them like that so we've had to separate them, and are patiently waiting for those darn feathers to grow back.

Would happily give you one if you were closer, but opposite hemisphere is probably a bit far.

 

[2boys1homestead]

Haha, no worries! We'll get some eventually! I hope your birds do well!