Anyone hatching April 5-7 or so? ALL DONE, READY TO BE LOCKED

[Suechick]

Oh, your projects all sound like sooo much fun.

Mrs Ford, we are a homeschooled family too. How many are in your group? We will invite our hs friends over for a hatching party. Last time we had about 2 dozen come to watch the chicks working their way out. I love the rooster guessing game!

Please let us know the trick.

DJF - yes we hatched twice before in our homemade bator. My 10yo son helped me design and build it. I spend hours pouring over the designs on the BYC bator page. Our first batch had a 33% hatch rate so we re-designed the bator to make it better. Added more insulation and a better turner. The second batch was about 10%! I have just discovered that my thermometer was reading 3.5 degrees low so when I thought the temp was 100 it was really 103.5!! That must be the explanation for the low hatch rate. When the bator had less insulation it did better since it wasn't holding on to the heat but the added insulation destroyed the 2nd set of eggs. I have high hopes for bator hatch #3.

Hope your EEs do well, I bought some but they look really messed up from the shipping so I don't have such high hopes for them.

koakritters - what are you using for hatching, a 10 year old incubator? Sounds like fun.

 

[koakritters]

i am using an older model hova-bator 2362, i'm not sure how old it actually is, i just know we bought it when i was a kid and we rescued quail eggs after the mom was killed by a dog, and i know i wasn't driving yet, so i was probably about 13, 14, so that would put it at 10 years old, lol! it still works since i got 2 chicks, i just haven't figured it out properly yet.

 

[chickensNpoodles]

My hatch is due on April 8th. I have 24 black and blue Australorps, 24 Cinnamon Queens and 6 Olive Eggers.

 

[Suechick]

that's so cool that you still have a bator from your dad. What do you think happened to your hatch? Sounds like you have a fun bunch of eggs, you could get some really interesting chicks. I can't wait to see pics.

 

[MrsFordTN]

We have kids monday though friday morning, some weekend visits if needed. None are 'my kids', but love them all. Right now I am schooling 11. I school special needs kids, but a few that have lost the 'right to go to school' due to behavior. Each student has a slot during the week for normal school time and then tutoring if needed when ever they need. We are already planning for the kids coming over to watch and I am also going to video the hatch if all goes well

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The trick she taught us, we had party for putting the eggs into, was that depending on the shape of the egg is how you tell sex. More Oval/Pointy eggs are male and nice little round eggs are female, idk if there is any truth to this at all, maybe. There is a difference in egg shape though, even from the same hens, like all the OEGs are from just two hens, and we have dots to mark which hen they came from, Hen 'blue' has two pointy and two round hen 'green' has one pointy and two round. Has anyone ever heard of this method?

 

[koakritters]

i think it was a mix of humidity problems (think i got that fixed now though) and the fact that they were old eggs that i hadn't really expected to hatch in the first place, i was just using them to get the temperature working correctly with eggs in it, and then after a couple of days i took them out to throw away, and you can't just throw away eggs, cracking them is way more fun

so i did.... 2nd one i cracked had little veins in it!!!

so i threw the rest back in immediately and started figuring this whole incubating this out real fast! 7 were viable, 5 made it to day 18 and 3 never hatched. i did an autopsy on the one who had been spinning his egg in circles and never hatched, idk what happened to him he was fully formed and everything, it was soo sad! i buried him and the 2 other unhatched eggs next to each other

too sad to open the others.

 

[ScissorChick]

I have a bunch of mutts!

I want some white leghorns.

 

[MrsFordTN]

Quote:
Well if you want you can come get some of ours if they hatch! These are some of the biggest chicken eggs I have ever seen! All singles too

 

[Suechick]

Your schooling sounds like a great outreach. What ages are are the students? I know plenty of families who would love to have a resource person to help them through difficulties, there are a LOT of us with special needs kids. Thank you for what you do!

My mom told me that about pointy eggs too. What gets me is, after they hatch how do you know who came out of which egg? Do you have sex-linked breeds? 'Cause most breeds it is really hard to find the difference between the roos and hens. Either way, the kids will love it!

 

[WVman]

I have a batch due on the 30th of march and a small batch due the 7 th