My cuckoo marans lay enormous light brown eggs (5-6 a week for each, sometimes one every day). One has a weird "painter" and has unusual looking eggs (not ugly just unusual). My leghorn hen lays huge white eggs (even her first egg was pretty big). I got to pick my marans from a local breeder...
You never know how the chickens are going to turn out until they hit their chicken puberty (unless it is a culled flock that has been filtered for personality traits over several years). I have so much personality variation, despite them all getting the same care, with my genetically similar...
My roosters reached maturity during the winter and their combs were uniformly colored. Then they started fighting and their combs started looking like the ones pictured (no illnesses observed in any of my split flocks, no lethargy, etc). My vote is with the others who said it is probably due to...
I voted 3, too. He reminds me more of my EE roo who is by far my personal favorite out of several due to his look and various things about his personality. He comes to me but isn't person or dog aggressive and is sweet to the girls.
That might have been my thread. I posted up my pics, shared some stuff, and talked about the result. I was hoping it would help/inspire people trying to setup their own home laying flock cheaply AND try their hand at building their own incubators.
I had good luck with Farmer's Pride fertile eggs (found at the only organic store in my area). I had 8 out of 12 develop and might have had more but there was a hot zone in my incubator (was a test run).
For my homemade incubator I purchased one dimmer switch from Lowe's for roughly $10 and a hot water heater thermostat for like $9-12 (pretty sure lowest it goes is 90 degrees F). After a week of tweaking I got it balanced out to where it mostly stayed in the ideal temp and the thermostat was...
I let mine sit out overnight to slowly come to room temps before I set them. I'm not sure it makes a difference but it was advised. Maybe in the future I'll do experiments with it. Like this last batch of 4 eggs I haven't turned them at all and 4 are developing.
I looked around for an organic foods store. There are only 2 in my area. The eggs I got were marked fertile from Farmer's Pride and they were being stored in a refrigerator.
Out of 12 eggs 8 developed (4 showed no development at all but not sure if it was due to being infertile or being in hot...
Yeah, there was one other chick which was yellow with a giant black spot on his/her back. I was calling it Bumblebee but he/she died (not a very strong chick). I do think it is neat how they all look (and act) so differently. I'm suspecting the mothers were ISA Browns or some form of sex-link...
These are some chicks I hatched out a few weeks ago from organic grocery store eggs. They are currently going through their uglies.
Chick #1: Suspected hen named Penguin. Doesn't look a whole lot like a penguin anymore with her new feathers.
Just added this one because it is pretty funny...
I have hatched 5 chicks from fertile store eggs. They were refrigerated but they developed ok. Originally, it was 8 chicks developing (4 showed no development and didn't have the bullseye so I'm guessing infertile) but one died early on and one failed to hatch. I think this was due more to my...
...a quick trip to the store and they are set. If food wasn't so plentiful and relatively cheap their stance on these things would change.
*edited to add- My original intent with chickens was to get a couple for eggs, have annual meatie flocks, and have some breeding pens set up for rare...
...be a rare breed) and they have very distinct personalities. The female one was named Spamzo from the first day we got them. I love spazmo, hehe.
*edited to add- EE's can lay varying shades of blue, green, pink, brown...etc. Depends on the particular EE cross and presence of the pea comb...
WOW, I'm so glad you got a duckling out of all your hard work. This would be an easy story to pitch in the states. I mean people around here love people overcoming adversity and it would be a great cultural/regional piece in any case. I personally enjoy learning about people who live in other...