➡ Quail Hatch Along🥚

[Crowdango]

Our first chick hatched out last night, and by the time I got home this morning, we had 5 of them scrambling around in the incubator! There are still two eggs that have pipped, so I left them in there to cook a bit longer.

(and the last one looks like the one just above)

Color-wise I'm guessing.... 2 pharaohs, 1 italian(?), possibly 2 tuxedos? The parent situation is complicated... our current male is a pharaoh, and the mother of all of the eggs is an italian. But a few of these eggs were refrigerated, and coincided with the time period in which I culled our other males. So potentially there's tuxedo in there, too, from one of those males.

Also I just never realized how little and soft the babies were; I love them so much.

 

[PoultryCQ]

@T P S Happy birthday!

Thanks! The eggs are in lockdown today as well.

 

[cherrynberry]

Our first chick hatched out last night, and by the time I got home this morning, we had 5 of them scrambling around in the incubator! There are still two eggs that have pipped, so I left them in there to cook a bit longer.

(and the last one looks like the one just above)

Color-wise I'm guessing.... 2 pharaohs, 1 italian(?), possibly 2 tuxedos? The parent situation is complicated... our current male is a pharaoh, and the mother of all of the eggs is an italian. But a few of these eggs were refrigerated, and coincided with the time period in which I culled our other males. So potentially there's tuxedo in there, too, from one of those males.

Also I just never realized how little and soft the babies were; I love them so much.

They are so cute.

 

[CovidtimeQuail]

Congrats to everyone on their hatches! Mine are going into early lockdown today. I don't want a repeat of where they started hatching out of the egg turner like last time. I think I have 14 viable, 2 flashlights.

 

[FloorCandy]

I have a bunch set to hatch tomorrow. I had set about 100, but when I went to candle on day 10, I noticed the turner wasn’t working. The brinsea has never had an issue before. Upon closer inspection, the bar with the notched tab that meets the turning gear thing was not aligned, the motor and gear thing had become unseated in its spot on the lid, and slid out a bit, so it was no longer lining up, so it was making all the noises, but not actually moving the trays. I lost about 40%. There were 61 remaining, but at least 10 were questionable. At lockdown, I found an oozing one with a crack, so I’m down to 60.

The celadons did better than the mixed group, I had about 65 set from the celadon pen, and the rest were from the celadon x celadon carrier pen. I only have about 17 eggs of the mixed group left, and the rest are the pure celadons. I fixed the turner on day 10, and it’s been fine since, I’m hoping for the best, spot checks at lockdown look promising. I have some of the snowie celadon project birds in the bator as of when I candled the ones that are going to be hatching, so In a week and a half I’ll have pure celadons coming from the project blue layers and a Tibetan tux celadon male. It’s exciting because when those hatch, I can keep some boys, I’ve been selling all the boys from the last 4 hatches because I can’t be sure they’re pure celadons. I did keep Apollo, and I plan to start testing him with some celadon hens and I’ll see if all his daughters lay blue. He’s so tiny and spunky and pretty I couldn’t part with him.

 

[FloorCandy]

I thought I’d post some pics of my white quail crew. There’s 3 albinos and 6 double silvers I believe. The white ones are all together now because the normies were pecking their eyes, and I had to cull 3 because they weren’t born with bulging eyes, but developed them after several weeks, I assume it was the other chicks, but since I can’t be certain, I culled them to prevent future bulgy chicks. The group spans about 4-5 weeks of age difference. The albinos can see, in fact one injured her wing today because she was running from me and flapped and whacked it on the food bowl. She doesn’t seem to notice, but it has a bruise. The albinos have grown to normal size, the double silvers usually stay small.

I snapped these just after I cleaned the cage, when the small ones are a bit larger, they’re all moving out into a pen outside under the deck.

 

[Crowdango]

My last two eggs hatched! 7/7 successful hatches, which doesn't feel too bad for a first try, especially with some of the eggs having been refrigerated and a no-name incubator brand off amazon. One lil dude has an unabsorbed yolk sac though, so I'm hoping that'll... take care of itself...

We also lost one baby overnight in the brooder -- got its head stuck in the wire framework of the little cave I made for them. Everything is wrapped in plastic wrap now, so they can't do that again. Will probably make more adjustments after work, since they keep shoving their way between the heat pad and the wire. It's like they want to die??

And since our male-to-female ratio has been soooo bad so far, and we really just want these guys for egg production for ourselves (goal is ~10-15 birds total, 2-3 groups of 5 with up to 1 male in each to allow for future hatches if we want), I ordered some eggs last night and we'll be doing one more hatch.

 

[FloorCandy]

My last two eggs hatched! 7/7 successful hatches, which doesn't feel too bad for a first try, especially with some of the eggs having been refrigerated and a no-name incubator brand off amazon. One lil dude has an unabsorbed yolk sac though, so I'm hoping that'll... take care of itself...

We also lost one baby overnight in the brooder -- got its head stuck in the wire framework of the little cave I made for them. Everything is wrapped in plastic wrap now, so they can't do that again. Will probably make more adjustments after work, since they keep shoving their way between the heat pad and the wire. It's like they want to die??

And since our male-to-female ratio has been soooo bad so far, and we really just want these guys for egg production for ourselves (goal is ~10-15 birds total, 2-3 groups of 5 with up to 1 male in each to allow for future hatches if we want), I ordered some eggs last night and we'll be doing one more hatch.

They try so hard to die the first few days! There’s an episode of the show American Dad, where they have a cloned dodo bird, and it spends the whole episode trying to kill itself by accident, like falling into a blender, or standing on a gun. I always think of that as I’m setting up my brooder.

 

[kurby22]

I thought I’d post some pics of my white quail crew. There’s 3 albinos and 6 double silvers I believe. The white ones are all together now because the normies were pecking their eyes, and I had to cull 3 because they weren’t born with bulging eyes, but developed them after several weeks, I assume it was the other chicks, but since I can’t be certain, I culled them to prevent future bulgy chicks. The group spans about 4-5 weeks of age difference. The albinos can see, in fact one injured her wing today because she was running from me and flapped and whacked it on the food bowl. She doesn’t seem to notice, but it has a bruise. The albinos have grown to normal size, the double silvers usually stay small.

I snapped these just after I cleaned the cage, when the small ones are a bit larger, they’re all moving out into a pen outside under the deck.

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Wow! Those are beautiful!

 

[kurby22]

My babies from @Nabiki are getting almost all feathered! I am in love with the coloring on this silver celadon I love the darker charcoal Gray colors!