Chronic egg issues in hatchery stock breeds

[DonyaQuick]

FYI if you ever order chicks, Mt Healthy shipped them at 11:45 pm, and they arrived to the post office at 1pm the next day. Fastest order ever. So whatever airmail they use to NY is super quick.

It's not the hatchery side of the shipping I worry about - it's the weird situation of post offices near me. Things don't go directly to my post office from a hub; they have to go through a neighboring town's post office, and that other office is very sloppy. Just since my original post in this thread they've put two different packages of mine on the wrong outgoing truck and sent them clear across the state before they finally come back make it to my town. I don't know if there's a way for me to have something held at that other office to stop that from happening; they won't do it with regular packages.

Congratulations on the Olive Eggers! Would love to see some close ups.

They're starting to come out from under the brooder plate and be curious. The lighting in the room is rubbish but here we go:

And this one has some feet fuzzies:

...and you know I just noticed some have a head dot and some don't. I know that means something in barred rocks...but I have read that should be meaningless in olive eggers since they shouldn't be sexlinked...oh man I hope it doesn't mean anything or I have been very dumb lol.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Nooooooooooooo I didn't need more boys dangiiiiiiiiit
"When Olive Egger eggs hatch, males often have a white dot on their heads, while females do not." from https://www.freedomrangerhatchery.com/shop/product/olive-egger/ but a bunch of other sites I'm now seeing say the same thing.

How did I get that wrong. UGH.

 

[DonyaQuick]

It depends. If they used a male cuckoo or legbar and female non-barred, they won’t be sex-linked. The othet way around they would. What does Hoover’s site say? (Usually they source my TSC).

I didn't know olive eggers could differ like that from hatchery to hatchery. I knew it was a mix, so I guess assuming it would be done exactly the same way everywhere was a bit dumb. I do think mine are from Hoovers. It doesn't say anything about being sex-linked; but it doesn't say anything about being sex-linked for sex-linked breeds either. All it says is this:

"One line is a cross of Americanas and French Cuckoo Marans. with this hybrid cross most of the females will be black but a few will come out blue. Another cross is between Legbars and Welsummers, our goal with these is to create a green egg that is speckled similar to the Welsummer's egg. Both of these crosses have a 5% chance of laying brown eggs. These are a mix and you could receive birds from either and or both flocks, there is no option to choose between the two."

So no clue about which is the rooster from the parent stock. I have also now seen some pictures of olive eggers with a splash of white on the head that turned out as hens so perhaps I'm being too paranoid.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Well I guess either way it's wait and see now. Took them far less time than it should have to decide I'm mom. I had to really invest a lot of time to win over several of my original BOs but these chicks just walk into my hand lol.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I realize I never updated on this thread after being worried about the head dots on the olive egger chicks I got back in July. All pullets as far as I can tell! Haven't got eggs just yet but there's not a single pointy hackle or saddle feather on any of them at 23 weeks old.

 

[Iluveggers]

Oh & if I had known earlier you could have just added to the order I got last week, I think I’m pretty close to where you are!

 

[Iluveggers]

Originally I was going to do purely that and spin up a bachelor flock, but I ended up in my first hatch with two brother roos who are doing the co-management thing with the flock - but that has made it double the roo to hen ratio I wanted. I don't want to break them up because they have gotten really good at cooperating to keep the flock together and in safe areas when everyone is out. Then I thought ok, I'll hatch some more with a small broody and was really hoping for 2-3 pullets and instead it looks like I have at least 3 boys LOL. I might have 1 pullet out of that. I knew that could happen so still ready to do a bachelor flock for them but I also kind of need a quick fix for the ratio in the main flock. I'm not really set up right now to hatch a large enough batch to ensure I'd get enough pullets.


That is a really good idea...I will keep an eye out and also ask if my local store has anything a bit less usual on the list.


Ah bummer, that's what I was worried about...and of course my local store is like leghorn week, then ISA brown, leghorn, RIR, leghorn - then one week of of crazy stuff where I was really upset I couldn't clear space for my brooder fast enough - and then right back to the usual rotation for a while.

I take it "black star" would be another high production one?

Actually I also see Marans reasonably frequently. Maybe that is the way to go.

Meanwhile my husband also keeps asking if I need any turkeys. My biggest roo is quite big but not that big, so I don't think so lol.


Oo that's something I didn't think about, splitting an order. I did see the place where it's 10 birds minimum seemed to have a bunch in stock compared to others I looked at (I can do 4-6 pretty easily...but 10 would be chaos). I should probably look around more at what's listed online different places.

Mt Healthy has minimum 3 with $35 shipping, but if you get 10, it’s only like $15 shipping I think…they had quite a bit available as of last week. Ideal I think is $20 ship with a $40 order which ends up being about 8 chicks. I think the other hatcheries I looked at either have super high shipping for small amounts, or free shipping with a minimum of 25. Hope that info is helpful!

 

[DonyaQuick]

Mt Healthy has minimum 3 with $35 shipping

Oh that is not bad at all! Somehow I had a lot worse numbers in my head for that.

I have no experience with the black sexlink hybrids like them, but it doesn't seem like I see much about them having issues... I'm not honestly sure on that one.

I just saw them for the first time this week; had never heard of them before that. Of course, I may never see them in the chick bin again this year now I've had a ponder about them, luck being what it is. I wasn't able to find much about them generally except that they are BR crosses which made me wonder if that would be kind of like the barnyard mixing I'm already doing...but if it's a cross between two high production lines then maybe not.

 

[Iluveggers]

Oh no! That's really sad. I guess they're not really like a sexlinked barnyard mix then. TSC is also where I saw the ones earlier this week.

I know. I figured I would tell you though and save you the heartache.

 

[Iluveggers]

...so I went out for supplies and groceries and came back with....um....

View attachment 3570509

Earlier in the morning I had the conversation with my husband that if I saw the right thing in the next few weeks we agreed I should get some to avoid having winter house chickens like I did last year (I hatched a couple way later than was wise then). I really did just go out for dry goods and groceries but some of those dry goods were at the local TSC. The person I talked to said they were unlikely to get anything else in the set of things I was interested in and might not get much else at all because of the time of year; they already have some older pullets piling up. I was always a bit iffy about mail ordering chicks because I've been having a some packages end up getting diverted to wonky places when going to my PO box, and just have this persistent worry that if that can happen to something inert then chicks could end up re-routing to Syracuse or something and getting delayed and bad things, so...now I have six olive egger pullets.

FYI if you ever order chicks, Mt Healthy shipped them at 11:45 pm, and they arrived to the post office at 1pm the next day. Fastest order ever. So whatever airmail they use to NY is super quick.

Congratulations on the Olive Eggers! Would love to see some close ups.