Refrigerator eggs

Had lots of excitement over the past few days. The quail hatched Tues-Wed and the chickens hatched Wed-Thurs (but 2 eggs are still peeping w/o external pips)

In the quail incubator the farmer market eggs (washed, refrigerated, & driven) had slightly better results than the backyard eggs (left alone). The farmer market chicken eggs are tied with the backyard eggs- unless one of the last 2 eggs backyard eggs hatches. No grocery store eggs hatched.


Chickens:






Quail:











BTW- Mama Heating pad didn't work for the quail. They are just so tiny & can get trapped inside everything. Will try it again in a week.

So here are the detailed results from DD's experiment....

QUAIL:
Since it was for a sci project, we just bought local eggs. I simply asked for the best breed for eggs & she said Jumbo Corturnix. She warned us that spring is a better time to hatch & that fertility would be very low. (She predicted only about 30% would hatch.) However DD's project must be completed by January, so we went ahead. She only charged us for eating eggs.

We bought 30 eggs from the breeder. The hatch went like this:
10 were left alone as a control, 5 hatched, (4 were clear, 1 developed but died)
10 were washed, put in the fridge & driven around to be the "farmer market eggs", 6 hatched (only 1 clear, 3 developed but died just before hatching)
plus 6 that were thrown in but not part of the experiment. 5 hatched (1 clear)
* 4 eggs were cracked open to check for bull's eyes before setting any eggs. They looked mostly fertile, 1 was a ?, & all were made into a mini omelet. LOL

Now comes the fun part of analyzing the data. 62% of the incubated eggs hatched. WOW! So much better than the breeder expected.
The control was 50% & the farmer market eggs were 60%. Yet is it fair to include eggs that were clear?
If we don't count the clears, the control got 5/6 or 83% and the farmer market eggs got 6/9 or 67%. That makes more sense.

The only other variable I can think of is the position of the eggs in the incubator. Because they were grouped, the positions in the turner were not changed. The control group was along one side & the farmer market group was in the center of the incubator. The incubator is automated, so the lid was rarely lifted.

Does anyone have other thoughts or ideas to add?

We'll be giving most of the quail (& all the the chicks) away. DD wants to train a few quail, so I'm modifying my mom's old parakeet cage in case we decide to keep maybe 3 as house pets until spring. (about 18x36") The alternative is to simply grow all of them out & have quail for dinner in 6 wks. The kids are protesting to that idea.

Anyway, on paper raising quail looks so easy. They're quiet, take up little space, mature quickly, & can be used for both meat & eggs. So, I suppose allowing the kids to keep a few will teach us if quail are a bird for us. (After reading about turkeys, guineas, geese, & ducks, none came even close to be considered.)

Can you believe these were about the size of a quarter 5 days ago?





CHICKENS:
Because we didn't know if any quail would hatch, we did the same experiment using chicken eggs.
Control: 6/6 hatched = 100%
Farmer Market: 5/6 hatched = 83% (One was a blood ring by day 7.)
+ plus 2 eggs that were thrown in at last min & not part of the experiment.

As far as the 3rd group = eggs from the grocery store. We were unable to find any fertile chicken eggs from the stores (tried 6 diff brands of free range or pasture-raised eggs & ate a lot of omelets.) Gave up & didn't bother trying to incubate infertile eggs. All 3 brands of quail eggs looked fertile, but there was no way to calculate the packing date. The quail eggs we purchased & incubated may have been well over a week old.

I can tell you the quail will have to be all female if you keep them. If you keep one male with 2 hens he will breed them to death. If you have 2 males they will fight to the death. I raised coturnix quail for several years. They also need a high protein feed like purina game bird starter. That's all mine got from birth to death. Also take into account the cage don't need to be higher than 18 inches. When quail get startled they flush straight up and if the cage roof is to high they build up enough speed to hit it and break their necks. It's not often but it does happen. Also the cage needs room even for just hens if they detect a weakness in one bird they'll kill it to protect the covey. Quail are a totally different breed than chickens in every aspect of raising. But coturnix are the easiest to breed and hatch and raise. The only thing I didn't like about them is the high protein feed made their poop stink extremely bad a lot worse than chickens. But if you decide to keep and raise them I can help answer a lot of your questions on them.

DD said Good Bye to all of the chicks & most of the quail. (They went to a farm in WI this weekend.)



I did allow a few quail to stay.
They are now 2 weeks old.