INCUBATING w/FRIENDS! w/Sally Sunshine Shipped Eggs No problem!

[Chaos18]

@Sally Sunshine here's another

never mind, I added it to the other post

 

[fire370]

We may get  a couple goats here.  Wow I didn't know goats milk was that price.

We wouldn't have goats but my wife likes them. So we got em. They are funny and make me smile. Full of antics.

 

[kwhites634]

We wouldn't have goats but my wife likes them. So we got em. They are funny and make me smile. Full of antics.

"Specially the kids

 

[lazyacre]

If I were to have a pet. I'd like to have a couple of pack goats. There's lots of hiking here in Utah,

 

[kwhites634]

"Specially the kids

Mom grew up on goat's milk in TN

 

[Chaos18]

Here's one for anybody that cares about shipping eggs and egg storage related to hatchability.

http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/content/74/9/1403.short

 

[kwhites634]

If I were to have a pet. I'd like to have a couple of pack goats. There's lots of hiking here in Utah,

I always thought a goat or pony cart would be neat; never got either one

 

[ChickenCanoe]

oh if anyone is terrible bored PLEASE have at researching setting pullet eggs for me, and I am not talking hearsay I am talking google scholar search.. Thanks!

Here's all I know about the subject of using pullet eggs for hatching. I wrote the following a while back. Sorry it isn't a scholarly article.

It is true that many people hatch from pullet eggs all the time with no problems.
It's also true that the smaller chicks from small pullet eggs will usually catch up in size by a year or so.
So what are reasons not to do it?

A chicken deposits about 2 grams of calcium in an egg - regardless of age. So a pullet egg shell will be thicker than one from a mature hen and possibly more difficult to escape from.

There is clearly less albumen and a smaller yolk. That means less nutrition. Mammal babies can get all the nutrition they need from the mother and the abdomen can grow to accommodate. Once that egg is laid, that's all the nutrition and space there will ever be.

I've had old timers tell me that continuing to hatch from pullet eggs will decrease egg sizes in subsequent generations.

On the other hand, albumen quality is better with young birds than older hens.

IMHO it depends upon how big the egg is supposed to be based on the breed. Eggs from the breed I raise are supposed to be 65 grams or larger. I've always tried to set eggs that were 55 grams or larger.
Then I had a predator massacre and only 3 mature hens survived. The pullets had just started laying eggs so I decided to set every egg I could get reducing my low weight limit to 45 grams. Now that those birds have matured (they're almost a year old), I see the results. Unlike past generations that started laying larger eggs by about 8 or 9 months of age, the eggs are still in the small/medium/large range rather than the XL and jumbo they should be by now.
That probably wouldn't matter to most backyard chicken people or even noticeable to those with multiple breeds. But since I've eliminated all other breeds, it's very noticeable to me. And since I'm breeding to a standard, egg and bird size is an important part of that standard.
I'm now paying much closer attention to egg size when I set and track results through adulthood and generations to follow.
I group eggs by sire, egg color and egg size. I'm tracking eggs in the 50-55 gram, 55-60 gram, 60-70 gram and 70+ ranges. In those ranges I'm checking hatch rates, chick survivability and weights. I'm weighing every 10 days for a month then monthly. In adulthood these hens are supposed to be 4.4-5.3 lbs. and cocks 5-6.6 lbs. I had been shooting to be at the high end of that range so we'll see what the future holds.

Do you find that your brown eggs sell better than whites? Folks 'round here prefer brown. Probably flip out over greens or blues.

Most prefer brown, a couple only want white. They do freak out on blues, greens and olives.
Mostly it is the ethnicity of people. All the Arabs and Asians only want brown.

Nope. All sell the same. But I don't have very many white egg layers in the egg sellers. I just mix them in. All eggs are white anyway that's what I tell them if they ask.

I like to mix them up too. I think it makes the carton look nicer.
All my white layers are gone now though

. I had leghorns, minorcas, jaerhons, anconas and a few polish. The first four were laying machines. I really miss the gigantic Minorca eggs.

True, but lots have themselves convinced that browns taste better

There's a woman up the road that runs a produce market and grew up on a farm that got into a heated argument with me (imagine that) about brown eggs tasting better than white. I tried to explain that the taste was dependent on what the hens ate, and the color was just breed specific. She wouldn't have any of it. I told her I'd bring her a white, a brown and a green egg and they would all taste the same. She just about kicked me out because I was challenging what she believed all her life.

And also, everything out of my free range layers is fertilized. I do have a lady that buys and her husband stopped eating them when he found out. LMAO. What a yuppie I thought.

people get weird ideas

I've heard of people who won't buy fresh eggs, store eggs better 'cause they're pasteurized.

buy at the grocery store where eggs and meat are made and no animals are harmed

Oh JEEBUS
There is poison in the tap water

Not to mention all the pharmaceuticals that can't be filtered out.

They musta never seen a battery farm

A friend who was a nurse stopped eating my eggs because she saw the chickens. I guess she didn't know that eggs actually came from birds. I tried to tell her what conditions battery hens live in. She didn't want to know.

That's like my current flock. They have nice clean water in there coop and run. As soon as I let them out to free-range round the property they head for the nearest dirtiest puddle they can find to have a drink.

I'll still eat them though

Maybe it's flavored.

Never drank much raw milk; only when I was on the grandparents' farm; not a lot of cows in the D.C. suburbs, but I remember shaking the bottle to get the cream mixed in.

Mostly when I was a kid. As an adult, I've only had it on a couple occasions. Once in Switzerland and another at a party of Sustainable Living folks and the hosts raised goats in their backyard.

 

[fire370]

If I were to have a pet.  I'd like to have a couple of pack goats. There's lots of hiking here in Utah,

Our goat pen is roughly 3 acres. They get locked up at night in smaller runs. Usually grain them right before dark so they come in. They are nimble and will climb anything. One of my gooseneck flat bed trailers is out in their pen right now and there are 3 of them up on top of the gooseneck.

 

[lazyacre]

Quote:
Growing up everytime our nanny got out she would climb up the front steps and ring the door bell. Made it easy to get her back into the pasture