Quote:
One of the biggest problems is that most of these eggs in incubators are shipped. I can hatch 95% at home and only about 30-40% on shippeds even though I only buy eggs from people I trust. Then I hear that my eggs aren't doing well somewhere else, when my niece hatched some in a shoe box with a lightbulb.
I just don't know of any other was to really get birds you want from somewhere far away. I have paid to ship an adult bird once and it cost me $70 and then died a week after it was here from the stress and climate change I'm sure. I hear horror stories of whole batches of day old chicks comming in dead... I dunno... what to do, what to do?
But my best luck yet has still been with hatching eggs. My last were Black Copper Marans, got 8 eggs and 4 hatched... one very correct cockerel and three very nice pullets... Sweet! as my teens would say. I still hear from people who get my eggs that 13 of 14 or 12 of 13 hatched... and I sit around and wonder what was different than the poor person who just got one of 18.
Hope these do GREAT!
I hope so, too. And you are right about the traveling eggs. I told my friend that she had an amazing hatch rate, but that my eggs did travel all the way from Texas!
The candling was promising. Quite a few live babies in there!! Just a few days left!! I am really hoping that having the broody on them gives me a better shot than if I was trying to control all the variables myself. The weather here is great and my broody is happy and mean, just the way she should be.