Colorado

[21hens-incharge]

Super cool birds Uzi!!

Not much new around here. My pullets are laying now and everyone is ready for winter...... Well except the leghorn. I do not think she is ever ready for winter.

 

[lomine]

View attachment 1137915 View attachment 1137918 View attachment 1137919

Here's a few recent pictures of my three sons. I'm not 100% sure what they'll end up looking like. I think Mim (the smallest) will end up looking like Damien (a regular peacock), Fin is showing signs of being pied (splotches of white randomly) & Sy looks like he's going to be black shouldered.

Wow! They've gotten so big. Three handsome boys for sure.

 

[PirateGirl]

So is everyone ready for winter? I woke up to frozen chicken water for the first time today. Time to start bringing it in at night again.

and my girls still are not laying and now it's getting below freezing at night again, soooo maybe they will never lay!

 

[21hens-incharge]

Have patience Pirate. They will lay but the trick will be collecting BEFORE they freeze.

 

[PirateGirl]

So I once read, probably on here somewhere @21hens-incharge that if you don't have an abundance of nest boxes that all the ladies will have to take turns laying in it and this will keep eggs warmer longer and help prevent freezing. Does this work in reality or will they just find other places to lay if the favorite box is occupied?

 

[lomine]

I've never heard of that. I suppose it could work because they will be keeping the eggs warm as they are laying. I've got a bunch of boxes and they all seem to prefer just 3 of them. Even the hen that has never laid an egg but still goes in the nest box almost daily will sit in one of those three. Your chances are pretty good that they'll lay in the same box(es).

They may not lay til Spring since the days are getting shorter. But they may also start any day. Never can tell when they'll finally decide to pay the rent.

 

[PirateGirl]

SPRING!!! NOOOOOOOOO! haha.

 

[21hens-incharge]

Mine have 7 boxes but use just 3 or 4.

The eggs still freeze.

 

[MuffMom]

I started a thread to get help on my low hatch rates. The humidity level seems to be a bit of a sticking point and the fact that I'm at high altitude was brought up. I'm going to do some research but I'm wondering, what humidity you all aim for when incubating?

Hi lomine-
I've been playing around with hatching at altitude for about a year now. It's like Christmas, only more frustrating and you don't get what was on your list. My hatch rate runs around 50% on a good day, 0% on a bad. Having said this, my incubator hatches are not "typical". Right now, I am using a brinsea 20 with a humidity pump. Paid out the big bucks, because my typical house humidity is like 15%. I knew that controlling the humidity would play a large part of figuring out the rest of my issues. Have tried "dry hatches" with no luck at all. Right now, I run the incubator at 45-50% humidity until lockdown and then bump to 68-72%. I do serial runs and add 4-5 eggs every week, because I was trying to target a mating pair. At first I removed the other batch to another (inferior) incubator, but now am trying to just hand turn the non-lockdown eggs. Still have 2 batches to go with this method. The first batch of 4 eggs did not hatch, but discovered I had closed the air intake hole, duh! We'll see what happens next! B1 had 2/4 hatch, B2 1/4, B3 0/4 B4 due this wed.
Experimented with soda lime too, but halting all the variables for a while. May go back to it again. By the way, I'm at 7800'.
This is what a quail Belgian d'Anver looks like when you get it right!

 

[lomine]

Hi lomine-
I've been playing around with hatching at altitude for about a year now. It's like Christmas, only more frustrating and you don't get what was on your list. My hatch rate runs around 50% on a good day, 0% on a bad. Having said this, my incubator hatches are not "typical". Right now, I am using a brinsea 20 with a humidity pump. Paid out the big bucks, because my typical house humidity is like 15%. I knew that controlling the humidity would play a large part of figuring out the rest of my issues. Have tried "dry hatches" with no luck at all. Right now, I run the incubator at 45-50% humidity until lockdown and then bump to 68-72%. I do serial runs and add 4-5 eggs every week, because I was trying to target a mating pair. At first I removed the other batch to another (inferior) incubator, but now am trying to just hand turn the non-lockdown eggs. Still have 2 batches to go with this method. The first batch of 4 eggs did not hatch, but discovered I had closed the air intake hole, duh! We'll see what happens next! B1 had 2/4 hatch, B2 1/4, B3 0/4 B4 due this wed.
Experimented with soda lime too, but halting all the variables for a while. May go back to it again. By the way, I'm at 7800'.
This is what a quail Belgian d'Anver looks like when you get it right!View attachment 1139733

My quail hatches when I was using properly stored eggs did well, about 84%. I've just been having trouble with the chicken eggs. I've been reading up on hatching at high altitude. I guess some folks use soda lime to get rid of the high levels of CO2 that build up and that seems to help. I don't know if I want to deal with all that though. Been thinking about putting some holes in the bottom of my incubator to help the CO2 escape. I think come spring time I'll try a few tweaks and see if I can get better results.

So I checked the eggs under my broody hen this morning. I think today is day 21, maybe 20. She had two blue eggs under her the other night when I candled and today there are none, just a few brown ones. There was blue egg shell. I have no idea what happen but someone obviously ate them. I'm guessing they hadn't developed because there were no chicks. I'll have to take a better look around this evening when I get home. I'll have to change out the straw because it really stinks now.

In happier news, I got four Cayuga ducklings from my niece's school.