Early Christmas present

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Question? I am very poor at how genetics present. If India blue hen was bred to silver pied male, would or could young female look mostly India blue? I am wondering, like GP, if this is my youngest hen. Probably not, no blood on egg but it is rather small for a pea egg.
I was thinking on getting rid of my IB hens to make room for some dif colors, when I noticed the barest sprinkling of white on one hen. Can't see it unless looking real hard and very bright sunlight!
There is a chance this girl is White Lightnings baby from summer before last. All my females preferred him. I don't even think pictures would pick it up. Would that be how a cross would look? Barely noticeable?
 
thndrdancr said:
For some reason, I don't think bacteria matters at all when you have natural incubation. I had several hens sit in the back of a barrel where I couldn't get to, and one hen was a nest pooper. Guess what? 99percent hatch rate, one egg was clear so might not have even been fertilized. The nest was filthy by time they hatched and I could get them out of there. (Finally had small neighbor kid crawl back to retrieve them)

But incubating is a totally different matter and I don't know why.
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Click to expand...
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I have had a faint glimmer of an idea... which could, of course, be totally wrong...

What if... the hen has a certain amount of natural immunity to the bacteria in her gut and in her nest, and somehow passes a little of that immunity to her chick, via the egg. But she cannot pass any immunity to the bacteria from my hands/house/human gut that she doesn't have in her own body.

So maybe... the bacteria which are killing the developing chick embryos are coming from the germs on my hands and in the incubator, not so much the ones from the hen's hiney???

Which means that while disinfecting the eggs prior to placing them is good, making sure they do not get contaminated later is critical. This would also explain why so darned many of them seem to develop fine and then die right after being candled, which is not normally anything that would kill an egg
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I dunno if any of this is right, but I've really been stewing about it. Thinking about gloves and hand sanitizer and I dunno what all else yet.
 
casportpony said:
@Garden Peas , thought you might find this interesting:


-Kathy
Click to expand...

Thanks, Kathy. I don't think it's chronic egg laying just yet. I think she has just gotten herself (with the help of the wild boys) into a regular spring/summer laying cycle. She's only up to 21 or so, which apparently isn't out of line (aside from the winter weather!) I'm convinced it is the red heat lamps.... must be putting out too much light.
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That might be so, garden pea. I had chickens sitting on these eggs the last week to 10 days of incubating. First 3 weeks was a peahen though. That's the one I had sitting on 8 eggs and she abandoned the nest when 1 hatched. I have NO idea how they hatched, as peahen would get off 5 hours at a time, etc. They were truly miracle chicks! So maybe any peahen carries this immunity, as ones I have had under chicken hen the whole incubation only had about 40 percent hatch rate, and that's a couple batches.
You might be onto something there but possibly its peahen antibodies as opposed to specific hen?
 
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Darnit!!! I brought my showgirl in cuz she was looking peaked, the mud and poop seems to cake on their feet so! Anyhow I thought she goes broody SO easy I would go ahead and put the 2 pea eggs I have so far under her, and I dropped the first one and cracked it. :(. Beyond taping. So I went ahead and opened it. It was fertile. Darn darn!
The other is a huge brown egg. Pretty sure it's a pea egg. But it's from a different peahen if it is? I am kind of confused. The first I know for sure was. I think my bs hen as she is grumpy Gus lately and she is usually good natured.

Stupid birds, I had the coop door propped open yesterday and went to shut it up after dark. My two peacocks were waiting to be let in the main door instead of going in the Pop door. The main door is not in the fence! Anything could have come up and grabbed them, the dodo's!
 
hmmm, mine actually started laying before she got bred, as evidenced by the clear eggs at the start. I think there is some individual variability at work here (kinda like different times for dropping & growing trains even in the same pen). I am not certain what triggers laying in the hen -- I think it must be a combination of light, weather and internal bioclock... and I believe that the males must also affect it with their calling (I'm back on the lekking thing again) -- I think that calling sends a signal, probably with biological consequences just like the sound of a baby crying creates a biological hormonal response in a lactating mother. I suspect that those male mating calls cue the hens to start laying... and if your hen is cooperating with the male, seems like eggs can't be too far out in the future...
 

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