Colorado

Yesterday was hatch day. I had 2 sets of chicks in the incubators. One set of 6 eggs from my flock that are RIR and the other set of 13 shipped silkie eggs from the West Coast. As of today, all of mine have hatched, even a porous one that I wasn't sure of. Of the 13 shipped eggs (i got 18 but only 13 made it past day 7 to be under the light), 5 have hatched, with 1 more that has pipped. I kept my incubator temp closer to 100 and humidity 45% until the last 3 days where it went up to 65-70%. My hatch rate is not great but I am happy. I know how hard it is to hatch at this elevation from sea level and the first set of eggs had a 0 hatch rate.

That was a GREAT video. I had never seen a chick hatch before. Amazing.

Funny thing. While I was watching this (I don't get great sound from my laptop, and the buffer takes forever) I was watching a program on PBS about all the cocatiels in Australia. I kept looking at my laptop saying I can't believe it, it sounds like the sound from my TV is coming through my laptop. What an amazing sound distortion. I knew it couldn't be your newborns making that noise, and I'd been listening in earlier in case you were talking us through the hatch. I finally muted my TV to find that you have some kind of screeching bird in the background. LOL, even my lousy laptop got good sound out of your bird.
 
Woo Hoo! Guess who got their first egg today! We think it came from this hen!

It has been a long 5 mos! I could not believe we were so excited! It's a perfect small little guy!

Here's to hoping the other 6 girls start laying soon! Good times!
 
That was a GREAT video. I had never seen a chick hatch before. Amazing.

Funny thing. While I was watching this (I don't get great sound from my laptop, and the buffer takes forever) I was watching a program on PBS about all the cocatiels in Australia. I kept looking at my laptop saying I can't believe it, it sounds like the sound from my TV is coming through my laptop. What an amazing sound distortion. I knew it couldn't be your newborns making that noise, and I'd been listening in earlier in case you were talking us through the hatch. I finally muted my TV to find that you have some kind of screeching bird in the background. LOL, even my lousy laptop got good sound out of your bird.

Speaking of my conure, Maggie....my SIL's mom has peacocks and amazons/conures/etc. In every flock there is always one little bird that isn't liked that much. Sooo, they know I love listening to birds chirp and thus, they asked me if I'd take Maggie. I asked, 'is she vocal?'. A twinkle of the eye and emphatic yeses and a week later, Maggie is at my door ready to be installed in my kitchen. I had visions of chirping and singing and perhaps even a vocalized 'Hi!". Instead, I got a little gal who squawks. The good news is she is much quieter that she was ever at their house and I think she enjoys the constant stimulation here. But that first morning when she squawked constantly it had my son going out to her cage and whispering to her, 'you know, Maggie... I hear pretty little birds like you taste like chicken.....'.

She can have a life span of 35 years so can expect her to be in my life for a very long time.

The hatch has officially ended. 6 of 13 shipped silkies (the last 2 needed intervention) and 6 of 6 of mine. I did a post hatch assessment of my eggs and they all had developed. They were all fully formed, 4 looked shrink wrapped and 3 looked as though they had drowned.

I borrowed Wendel's incubator and it was a hovabator forced air. I was very pleased with it from temperature adjustment, clarity during hatch, and best of all cleaning after.

I feel great about the hatch and was able to save two babies. One was a no brainer as it coud only come out half way and then wasn't able to free itself. The other was a pip from yesterday morning that I gently broke shell to see what was going on. That's when I noticed the inner layer was dry. So I went to my bathroom, turned the hot shower on, brought the hovabator in there and took the little egg out and carefully, over the course of about 3 hours, took small pieces of shell off where the air bubble usually is and at the natural pip line, wrapped it in paper towel unti I was confident enough that the little chick had absorbed enough. Then I just watched it. When it made its attempt to come out that last time, I just had to wet some yuck down and carefully take it off with tweezers.
 
Woo Hoo! Guess who got their first egg today! We think it came from this hen!

It has been a long 5 mos! I could not believe we were so excited! It's a perfect small little guy!

Here's to hoping the other 6 girls start laying soon! Good times!

First eggs are the most exciting eggs. Congrats!
 
would someone remind me when the next bird swap is? Denver, greeley, fort collins or brighton? I have 25 lovely red star pullets that are for sale. And I may have some white heritage turkey chicks as well. I still have some grey call ducklings for sale. These birds are not for slaughter!
 

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