Belgian Watermaal Bantams - a cousin fo d'Anvers/d'Uccles!(pic heavy)

[Backwoods Bntms]

More luck ! Found a triple-spiked millie cockerel in the brooder this evening (wonder who his mama was). Guess I will be starting off with millie watermaals.

 

[KristenG]

Well, sometimes the birds choose for you. I've had the same experience here, lol

 

[cmfarm]

I saw the title to this thread and didn't know anything about this breed so I thought I would check it out. They are so cute! They remind me of Road Runners.

 

[KristenG]

Mine have an interesting personality. Unlike roadrunners, mine freeze and hold perfectly still when they are in unfamiliar territory. Every year we have a biology lab called "role call of the animals" and it involves a bunch of taxidermed specimens lined up on the back counter. As a joke, one year I put a Watermaal on a piece of dried wood and labelled it "CHICKEN" and stuck it in between a Great Horned Owl and a Western Screech owl and she held still enough that everybody thought she was just another specimen. It wasn't until halfway through the lab when someone leaned in really close to get a good look at her that she moved. Boy the student wasn't expecting it at all! They jumped back and the hen flinched and decided she wanted to leave. She jumped off the stump and came running over to me. Cute little girl.

 

[Backwoods Bntms]

Started saving eggs from 3 pens today, should have some F1's in a month.

 

[KristenG]

Mine are growing. I'm not going to be able to hatch until late next year, I am sure. Sad thing, but necessary. I will be looking to your birds to fill my void. I will be excited for pictures!

 

[Backwoods Bntms]

Mine are growing. I'm not going to be able to hatch until late next year, I am sure. Sad thing, but necessary. I will be looking to your birds to fill my void. I will be excited for pictures!

Will do my best.

 

[Backwoods Bntms]

So far I have 2.5 doz F1 eggs should have 8 or 10 more by Sunday when I put them in the incubator.

 

[Backwoods Bntms]

Candled my Watermaal project eggs today. One pen the rooster must be sterile,wasn't any of them good. But the other two pens wer so I have about 2 dozen developing.


Update--- rooster had a dirty butt,cleaned him up and giving him another shot.

 

[KristenG]

I've had that happen before. In fact, that happened this last year with my Watermaals, causing me not to hatch any until really late in the year. The male wasn't dirty on the butt though. Then I finally started getting fertile eggs and none of them hatched, and I even tried broody hens. Finally, at the end of the year I had a couple of Watermaal hens go broody and I just let them be, figuring nothing would come of it. That's when I finally got some chicks. About time. Sheesh. I didn't have room to rearrange them with the huge crop of young birds I ended up hatching in 2012, so I had figured I wasn't going to get anything out of them...but, thankfully, I was wrong. I think part of the problem is that my hens had previously been in with an entire lot of Quail d'Anvers and were selectively picked on and chased away from the feeders. I think they didn't have a chance to build up a good reserve of nutrients to pass on to their hatching eggs and I would guess it took them several months after being separated out before they finally recovered. This is my best guess, anyway.