For my girl
In the Brooder
I also ordered from Orchard Hill Poultry. I got 105 Texas A&M Jumbo Coutornix in December. We were having unusually cold weather (in the 20's). They are large enough that I had to run 5 trays instead of 6 in my Hovabator turner, and then I still had problems with the bigger ones falling out and getting crushed. We incubated 99 and hatched 72. We really only want to keep 8 or 12 so I listed them on craigslist and traded some to our feed store for a bag of feed. I ended up with 12 chicks, a bag of feed, and $120. My daughter missed the hatching - so we just hatched another batch. We put all 105 in the incubator this time - with 6 needing to be turned manually. This time the egg turner really went south - dumping and breaking eggs. It broke it's actuator arm - so I had to empty the brooder to be able to manually turn the eggs. I glued a piece of wood to the broken arm, put the eggs back into the turner - with only turning them manually for 2 days. Then an arm on a tray broke... At lockdown we had 84 eggs left. They started hatching yesterday and so far we have 52. Resilient little guys... It's below freezing again - but the first 12 are fine in our old bunny hutch with a box and a pile of hay to hang out in. Go directly to their website or call them - they only list on Ebay when they aren't getting enough orders on their own.
If you get the Jumbo's then sort the eggs by size and put them into one row on each tray going down in size and then come back filling in - they'll fit a little better. I'm not planning on buying in bulk again (unless I just feel like hatching them). So I'll probably only do one row per tray in the future. For what it's worth - the quail trays from Little Giant fit the Hovabators - and they are molded nicer.
If you get the Jumbo's then sort the eggs by size and put them into one row on each tray going down in size and then come back filling in - they'll fit a little better. I'm not planning on buying in bulk again (unless I just feel like hatching them). So I'll probably only do one row per tray in the future. For what it's worth - the quail trays from Little Giant fit the Hovabators - and they are molded nicer.
