Who else is setting eggs this week ?! :D

I'm setting eggs in a few days, but it's going to be under my broody.  The hatching eggs should arrive in a couple of days!

I got a bunch from an auction here on BYC.  Frizzled and B/B/S cochins, EEs and lavender ameraucanas, lavender orps.  This is my first time hatching from shipped eggs.  We just had a baby hatch from a friend's fertile BCM eggs, and more eggs due to hatch in about a week under another broody.

B/B/S = black/blue/splash.  When you breed a black and a splash, you have a 25% chance of getting black, 50% of getting blue, and 25% of getting splash, and you don't know until they hatch.  (I might be wrong on the numbers.  I'm hatching, not breeding.)  I'm hoping for splash, since I have a blue, and I have 4 other black chickens of different breeds.

BCM = black copper marans.  They're the ones that lay the very darkest of the chocolate eggs.  My eggs came from a friend, who passed them on to me after they weren't dark enough for her breeding program.  But I just want a pretty backyard flock, not a breeding program, so I don't care.

I haven't incubated before.  My daughter wants to, but I'm not ready yet to pay the money and watch the humidity.  It's way too easy to just put the eggs under a broody hen, then let the mama raise them.

These are my eggs I just set a few minutes ago, so tomorrow is technically day 1. Thirty eggs from my own purebred Araucanas. My girls have not been this productive until just the past week, so I gathered all I could. Of course, today two more girls decided to go broody and not lay, the twits.

Since my roos and hens are tufted x tufted (a lethal gene when homozygous, so the parents are heterozygous), approximately 25% will be dead in shell near the end of the incubation. But if I am lucky, I should have a bunch of healthy little chicks despite that!

Quote:

Originally Posted by americanvalkyrie 

B/B/S = black/blue/splash.  When you breed a black and a splash, you have a 25% chance of getting black, 50% of getting blue, and 25% of getting splash, and you don't know until they hatch.  (I might be wrong on the numbers.  I'm hatching, not breeding.)  I'm hoping for splash, since I have a blue, and I have 4 other black chickens of different breeds.

 

Not quite, but your genetics are close! Those are the percentages for breeding two blues together, not a black and a splash. Here are the % for BBS crossings. Copies and pasted from this BYC Article.

Blue x Blue = 50% Blue, 25% Black, 25% Splash

Blue x Splash = 50% Blue, 50% Splash

Blue x Black = 50% Blue, 50% Black

Black x Splash = 100% Blue

Black x Black = 100% Black

Splash x Splash = 100% Splash

NOTES - - Black can NEVER parent a Splash Bird, and Splash can NEVER parent a Black Bird.