Back At The Chicken Shack

[Lauravonsmurf]

Darn it. We have been worried about the RIR chick, he was never very active and despite our efforts he Simply did not thrive and passed. So I will reorder RIR eggs… still no joy on the RIW eggs.

 

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We ordered more eggs, trying again. Some of the eggs are already in the incubator.

 

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How the Buckeyes are coming along

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

Well hopefully this batch will hatch… if not try try again… lock down.
Also Naked Neck study https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09712119.1998.9706671

Good stuff in it

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

Updated photos of the flock…

We put the young Pullets out in the old blue coop so the bigger girls can get to know them during the day… at night they will now go in the super secure little houes/coop then move them in morning back out here. I will probably put the D’Uccles with them at first… when I start step two… right now step 1… day time safe introduction to big girls, big girls free range but big waterer is near the babies “play pen” coop we decided to keep up for this purpose for now.

You can really see the size difference in this photo, that red body in the back is one of the RIRs we have been raising from earlier this year. I hope the RIWs yellow up, the one in the above photo should have yellow legs.

I don’t think I got photos of every chick or chicken outside… they were very active.

The youngest pullet is still inside with the three Egyptian cockerels, the boys are starting to crow, so I collard them today and we are monitoring them inside for now. No pictures of the boys… but here is the younger girl Naked Neck pullet… she is Na/Na… very excited about that.

We are looking forward to doing some experimental breeding with the NNs, goal is to improve overall size. I think if we can get a few nice roosters hatched of RIR, RIW, and or Saipan we can then work toward….

Goals

Saipan improvement using only Saipans
RIR And RIW improvement project adding in exhibition lines and heritage lines to flock.

NN experiment… cross breeding with several breeds mostly hoping to use the various breeds via crossing either directly or with F1 crosses to the Naked Necks.

We are hoping for one nice RIR rooster, Saipan rooster and maybe a RIW rooster to hatch.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

Hatching this year so far has been difficult, we have had two chicks not make it after hatching one was deformed, a chick somehow injure the membrane while trying to hatch and hemorrhage (totally never had that happen before), the one that failed to strive despite hand feeding it, lots of eggs that never developed, but as of right now we have 4 live chicks… no Rhode Island’s yet, we have had power outages and incubators not working right… so I am sure this has not helped. I think we have three incubators now working consistently and correctly…. Two we are ordering parts for hopefully we can get them working right. We will keep trying to get the Rhode Island’s to hatch… I will post baby pictures soon of the four chicks we have hatched so far.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

It looks like we have 1 RIR, 1 RIW, 2 Ayam Cemani, and 1 Spitzhauben so far…

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

Took these pictures of some roosters at my Optometrist’s place… the whit Rooster kept ducking behind stuff every time I got him in focus. The other two boys were in the trees, I couldn’t get a good shot of the second rooster… cell phone snap shots.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

We set another mail ordered dozen hatching eggs, two of the eggs came cracked. I sealed the crack with finger nail polish. I candled each egg and attempted to find the air sack on a few I could not find it. After the eggs were delivered we let them rest wide in up, pointy end down for 24 hours. I marked each one with an X using a sharpie. We then put them in incubator #1 on Tuesday June 14th. We have let the eggs sit upright in the incubator with the turner off. We decided not turn the turner on for 48 hours to help the eggs repair internally. Today we turn the turner on and set the eggs on their side.

We are trying to improve hatching rates by trying out different advice. Hopefully more than one egg hatches this time.

In general the sellers all have done a decent job of packaging it is just the post office has been rough on the packages. We pretty much have had cracked eggs in every order and two orders had broken egg messes despite the seller’s attempts to pack the eggs good. Only order number 1 this year had me worried right away, the eggs were very dirty and when we candled those we couldn’t see any fertility indication and that was one of the nothing hatched.

Super Porous eggs seem never to hatch… I incubate them anyway, these are usually the ones I can’t find the air sacks on because the spotting makes it hard.

The eggs in the incubator are 12 Blue Wahl Asils.

So far out of 3 dozen RIW from different sellers = 1
8 D’Uccle = 1 deformed chick which died = 0
1 dozen Ayams = 3 hatched, 1 never opened it eyes which died = 2
4 Saipan eggs = none hatched = 0
2 dozen different sellers RIR = 2 hatched, 1 from each dozen but one chick refused to eat or drink = 1

The 5 chicks we have hatched are doing great.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

Our current dominant rooster is this little guy Peepers a D’Uccle.