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Such a lovely story! Honey might likely be a Cherry Valley/ Pekin duck.

I read the thread. You & others want a good incubator on a budget in the uk - perhaps you should re read what I wrote. To clarify: All I’m suggesting is you put that £40 odd into a decent quality used incubator from a reputable brand. If you hunt on the second hand sites you needn't faff about...

I hate to say it, but with incubators you do get what you pay for. If you are buying in your hatching eggs not investing a decent incubator could cost you more in the long run. Brinsea are decent enough & there are enough second hand ones out there. Brinsea also do spares and are very helpful if...

Well I think our main hatch is done & we had 25/45 hatch successfully. No “should I....shouldn’t I help” eggs & not one egg needed assistance at all. A lovely clean trouble free hatch - phew! Yay! & thanks all! I think your advice on humidity really helped. I will wait for that first pip before...

Top soil sounds great - I hope it works well & just be sure if you use potting compost it doesn’t have additives or pearlite in it & that should be fine too! & If it gets too dusty don’t be afraid to try something else. You are very welcome & the credit really belongs to byc - much of what I...

Hatching has started! Yay!!!!!

With them being in your bedroom you really want to keep the dust down for your health - so I would completely avoid diatomaceous earth or the very fine sands such as play sand with light particles. They’ll get in the air & you’ll all breathe them in. You need a heavy sand like builders sand or...

We use non medicated chick crumb. I do crush an iron free (no iron is very important!) human multivitamin into their first water - so it’s very dilute. Most of our hatching eggs come through the post so I can’t always take a view on the health of the parent stock. I’ve found adding this vitamin...

I should probably clarify - we’ve been successfully incubating & hatching chickens for 10+ years. We have many many different incubators, some suit certain species better than others.... - re-brooding we had a tried & tested routine... until the cat outsmarted it. Last year we had problem with...

Well, with quail I feel we’ve failed. We do better with chickens ducks etc, but quail seem to be harder to get to adulthood. It’s been variable but poor. One hatch of 14 live chicks - we lost them all over about 6 weeks to just insane outcomes.... that included the chick that managed to get...

It’s just too cold here too. Assume I know nothing.... (coz that would be right!) do infra red bulbs come in wattages? Do I need to do a volume calculation? I’m sure I heard somewhere red light can make birds aggressive? Is that even vaguely true? Would you mind telling me your thoughts on...

I’ve never used a bulb type heat source ever. This is the first time it’s been a serious option.... I know nothing! do you use infra red?

The really do push the boundaries on survival don’t they! I always think getting out of an egg looks traumatic enough & then there is brooding quail???? It’s a while other level of unexpected!

Just trying to keep them alive really! hubby thinks maybe I try too hard... and higher losses are just inevitable with quail - but as you say they really do push the boundaries of unexpected! Our hot plates are all “chick comfort”s with tiny narrow spindly legs - maybe that’s why the quail...

Yup had them wander away from the plate & get cold, at least one every hatch. I’m no expert with quail at all ... we seem to lose too many post hatch for quite frankly bizzare reasons? I’ve even had one get fatally entangled in paper towel when we tried that as bedding. So far never we’ve had...

This is our new hopefully cat proof brooder - I can fit a heat plate in. But it has a bulb thingy - it does hang quite low? I’m wondering if I should try using something in that as a heat source? Or is it too low / fire hazard..... Any thoughts? I don’t have to use it... it’s simply an option...

So these are what we’ve brooded successfully in for years.... until one of the cats worked out how to fish for chicks... the smaller the chick the more at risk it seems to be.

They look fab! Well done! We’ve been using sand for so long I’d forgotten why we’d moved away from shavings in the brooder, we are in a lockdown right now so having to improvise. We are also under avian flu restrictions so the majority of poultry that would usually free range is on bedding and...