big mystery hatch-4 hatched

[Akane]

So to start off my new hova genesis with the first hatch of the year I have a whole bator of mystery eggs since none of my breeds are seperated yet. In the big coop there are my dark brown layers mixed with a little ameraucana which gives all the large eggs both dark brown and that odd shade of brown. They contributed 11 eggs. The bantam coop started with 2 btb jap roos, 1 frizzle, and 1 dark serama roos and was switched right before collecting so the japs were removed and a d'uccle cross known to carry the blue egg gene was added. Hens consisted of 3 sebrights, 2 seramas one white and one buff, 2 japs one white and one buff, and 2 of the d'uccle crosses which lay blue eggs. The result is another 24 bantam eggs with 7 being blue.

I also got this nice "weather station" from menards. It can connect multiple outdoor sensors which read humidity as well as temp and I can set alarms for high and low temp on each sensor. So far both the main unit and the sensor read the same so I'm going to assume they are calibrated fine although the humidity is rather high. With the snow just melting, rain storms, and the ground saturated as much as it can be I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt and agree it's 47% humidity in the house.

The temps aren't the same here cause I just brought the unit from another cooler room. The sensor is a little big so it can't be set on the eggs but if it proves accurate enough I will be able to buy more sensors and hook all my incubators to one wireless unit with alarms for all the temps. Currently the sensor and the thermometer that came with the genesis agree the eggs are 100F and 50% humidity (I shouldn't have added water).

 

[pdsavage]

Love mystery chicks I have just over 4 dozen of em.

 

[Akane]

So I added 4 bantam and 2 standard eggs half a day later. I really wanted to fill the incubator for my first hatch but they just didn't quite lay enough. I candled today what I could and out of all the bantam eggs only 2 are questionable. The 4 lighter brown ones seemed good but 2 were hard to see. The dark brown ones I can't tell yet. Possibly many many chicks. I am having a few humidity oddities though. At one point the room humidity was measuring 43% and the incubator 19%. I pulled the sensor out and set it next to the main unit again. It went up immediately and was within 5% the next time I checked them. So I added some water to the incubator and put the sensor back. Humidity readings have fluctuated some but I haven't had any really extreme ones like that. If it runs dry the incubator does read much lower than the room humidity. I don't know if this is a failing of my sensor or just something that happens with forced airs instead of still airs. If it has any water in it at all then it will read at least even with the humidity in the room. Right now both the incubator and the sensor read 36% and I added a little water.

 

[Akane]

2 serama eggs never developped but those hens just started laying. The other 37 eggs look good. I think there are a lot of serama x sebrights. All the bantam EE eggs are doing well as usual. Those are the ones that have given me 100% hatches a couple times now. Humidity seems to have been a bit on the high side because the air sacks are rather small on some eggs. I'm going to let it run dry for a few days before it comes time to remove them from the turner.

 

[GlitterKitty]

Awesome! I can't wait adn keep us updated! Also make sure you post lots and LOTS of pics

 

[Akane]

For the logical update to this thread I left the humidity low for 3 days and then raised it this evening back to 45% to hopefully counter the rather small air sacs.

Now for the illogical part:

I don't wanna wait another week! Make my chickens hatch now! I want cute serama crosses! Now... Now... Now... Now!!!!! *needs smiley of throwing temper tantrum on the floor*

Sorry I have nothing else to think about at 2am while unable to sleep.

 

[pdsavage]

Mine are suppose to hatch today I think they are going to hold out on me

....
I just can't wait to see what hatches Bantam Cochins/Red Sussex should be interesting....
Thats one thing about mixes you never know what to expect,even doing the chicken calculator doesnt say much cause you never know what genes they are hiding....
http://kippenjungle.nl/kruising.html

 

[Akane]

24 good bantam eggs and 13 standard eggs went in to lockdown today. It is day 17 but with all the seramas and serama crosses I thought a day early would be good. I'll try to get the webcam up by sunday just in case but otherwise day 21 is tuesday.

 

[Akane]

The serama crosses decided they want to be easter chicks. There were 2 pips when we left earlier today and 3 pips now. Still working on getting a webcam up. I only have dell copies of windows and the desktop doesn't have a dell motherboard so it wouldn't install them. Linux won't register my camera despite the fact I've used it before so I scrapped together a computer from spare parts that's very slowly installing windows.

 

[Akane]

First chick of the year:

Vids to come but photobucket is uploading very slowly.