Bielefelder hatch 2019

[danceswithronin]

I ordered my first incubator and after much deliberation, I decided to make my first batch of chicks a clutch of bielefelders. These chicks will be for sale locally, but I'll probably end up saving back a pullet for myself.

The incubator will arrive May 7th and the eggs should arrive May 14th or 15th. Since I've never incubated eggs before, I'll be documenting the experience here!

 

[danceswithronin]

They are beautiful birds! Best of luck with your hatch and please do keep us posted!

Will do! I am very nervous and excited to hatch a brood myself. As soon as my Orps are old enough to go broody, I'll probably just allow them to hatch out my eggs for me instead, but it'll be nice to know how to use the incubator so I can have multiple groups going at once if I want. There is apparently a thriving market for rare breed chicks in my area so I decided to do this as a sort of hobby side hustle just to recoup some costs on feed and whatnot. Plus I just enjoy the various breeds anyway and it gives me an excuse to add to my own flock, lol.

 

[danceswithronin]

So, surprise... the incubator and hatching eggs showed up on the same day. Project Red Cuckoo Partridge is officially a go

This is gonna be a mess..

I'm gonna wait until the incubator is stabilized for several hours before setting the eggs, but sneak preview!

 

[danceswithronin]

I didn't set the eggs last night or this morning, I wanted to give the incubator plenty of time to stabilize with water in it so the temperature and humidity are good. So far it is holding at a steady 99.5F. I still need to check the humidity. I really wasn't prepared for the eggs to show up on the same day as the incubator, I wanted a few days to read the instructions and figure out how to use the thing first. Oh well! I'm planning to mark and set the eggs tonight after I do a bit more reading about it. Hopefully waiting won't affect my hatch ratio too much.

In the meantime, here's some random bielefelders:

 

[FoodFreedomNow]

I'm fighting the urge to acquire some BF hatching eggs...will have to live vicariously through your thread for now, since I have two batches of chicken eggs in the incubator already. The problem is that I know there are spares just waiting to be filled...

Particularly interested in seeing if the auto-sexing at hatch is as easy as with Cream Legbars. And nice choice of incubator - should be a breeze to prep for your eggs.

 

[danceswithronin]

I'm fighting the urge to acquire some BF hatching eggs...will have to live vicariously through your thread for now, since I have two batches of chicken eggs in the incubator already. The problem is that I know there are spares just waiting to be filled...

Particularly interested in seeing if the auto-sexing at hatch is as easy as with Cream Legbars. And nice choice of incubator - should be a breeze to prep for your eggs.

Thanks! The incubator was a bit pricey to only hold seven eggs, but I have a lot of confidence in Brinsea products so to me it's one of those "you get what you pay for" things. I'd rather buy two small expensive incubators that work well than one large one with hatching issues.

I'm hoping the autosexing feature plus the rarity of the breed will help me sell these easily, I am thinking of charging 20 per female chick and 10 per male chick since I have never seen them for sale locally.

 

[sumi]

They are beautiful birds! Best of luck with your hatch and please do keep us posted!

 

[casportpony]

Wow, those are gorgeous chickens! Good luck with your hatch, I look forward to updates.

 

[casportpony]

 

[danceswithronin]

Now that the temp and humidity are stable, I set the eggs! I also marked each of them with a number 1 through 7. I'll mark what I find for each egg when I candle on Day 7.

I ordered ten eggs and got a dozen, so I had five left over:

I'm planning on buying another incubator (same type) and setting these too, hopefully a day or two delay in setting them won't affect hatching rates too bad.