Breeding silkied Cochin bantams to the Standard

[NanaK]

Whoo hoo!
Babies on the way!


Good luck!

 

[Painted Calls]

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

This is my faaaavorite part of hatching. No significant change since this morning. The first to pip did knock a tiny bit of shell off so I can see its little beak in there shifting and 'chewing' every now and then, though.

...They're going to wait until 3am to hatch, aren't they?

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Not 3am as I feared, just a few minutes before midnight instead. Little one appears to be Blue, though, so not a keeper unfortunately.

Second to pip is zipping now

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Right out of the egg with that bantam Cochin attitude. This one is a Boba baby!!

And that's it for this batch! Cute fluffy pictures to come tomorrow.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Y'all, I'm losing my darned mind over here! I'm aware that it's April 1st, but I promise you this is not a prank.

The second egg to hatch, it has to have been Boba's. Like, I can't be 100% sure, I didn't see the egg come out of her, but she was the only one in the nests when I checked the first time the day I collected it, she was the only one acting like she was going to lay, and I was collecting to set that day so no other eggs were in the boxes, I'd already collected the only other egg and brought it in the house. It was 45 minutes, maybe an hour at most, between that check and the next one when I found what I assumed was her egg, not a lot of time for anyone else to suddenly decide they were going to lay and go do it, especially since no one else was acting like they wanted to lay. And the Cochin girls were in that coop for over a month, so Gus has to be the father, none of the roosters in the mixed flock (not to mention none of them are the right color for this, and the only two that could have bred her in that flock are Silkies so I'd know if they were the father).

But that chick sure looks like a dark Blue to me now that it's dried a bit.


Boba did have very confusing chick down that I went back and forth on for a while wondering if she was Blue or Black, but then she feathered in Black so I assumed she must have been... Maybe she really is a super dark Blue?? I'm going to have to look at her really closely when I go out to open coops this morning and see if I can't figure this one out. Because if that somehow wasn't her egg after all, then all of the eggs I have marked as hers are wrong and I have no idea which chicks I can keep anymore.

Slight edit for clarity​

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

This was Boba as a baby, by the way--notice I put in parentheses that she could be Blue because I really couldn't tell! The more I look at this picture, though, the more I suspect she really is Blue!

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Take a look at her fluff under her wing and tail. That's how I realized my boy was actually an incredibly dark blue. And he kept throwing blues when paired to blacks

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

That's just what I did, and you know what, she's Blue! I can't believe it! I feel like I've been April fooled by my chickens!

Which... is pretty close to the truth, actually--that baby had a 50-50 shot of being Blue from that pairing, and it hatched just after midnight, so on April fool's day! What a set of pranksters!


Anyway, no super great pictures yet, but I did just move them to the brooder and got this shot of them figuring out where the heat is.

 

[3KillerBs]

Wow!

And with silky feathers you can't really tell by the lacing, right?

Lacing is how I know a couple of my darkest girls are actually blue.