Day 19 and Worried - NOT worried anymore!

[Wynette]

Holy cow, your pictures are AWESOME! Nice & close - GREAT!

 

[MaransGuy]

Thanks, The photos were taken through the top of the incubator - it's one of the 'full view' hovabators. I love that machine! Regarding candling the dark eggs, what I use is one of those 1,000,000 candle power flashlights. I took a plastic flower pot/hanging basket, cut a hole in the bottom and lined the hole with electrical tape. This helps cushion and seal around the egg. The light will get hot prety quickly but you can candle for about 5-10 seconds without a problem. This gives you ample time to see what is going on inside. You still don't get a lot of detail but you can see blood vessels at about 7 days and monitoring the air cell is easy. I will try to get a photo of the light assembly and post it to make it a bit easier to understand.

Richard

 

[Freebie]

Wow, those are some awesome pictures. Do you have any of your Marans. I am thinking of getting some, just because I love the color of the eggs. Sounds silly doesn't it.

 

[skeeter9]

Oh, I love BC Marans. I have a couple of young Cuckoo Marans cockerels and about 16 eggs in the bator. I love them, but the BC's are beautiful. I've heard that their eggs are darker than the Cuckoos. Is that true?

Best of luck with the rest of your hatch,

Lori

 

[MaransGuy]

The color of the marans egg varies so much depending on what line you get your stock from. I do believe that there are more lines of the BC that have good color than the cuckoo but not all BC have good color. I was thrilled that my eggs just won best of show at the Syracuse show a couple weeks ago. I was hoping to maybe get reserve but was shocked to take first place. I got my eggs from Bev Davis down in Florida (www.bevsmarans.com) and it was well worth it as she has some of the best quality in the US. Here is a photo of my 7 month old rooster with one of his hens' butt too:

They are giving me some very nice eggs, some of which you can see in an earlier photo.

Richard

P.S. There's nothing silly about wanting them for the egg color - It's the main reason any of us want them!

 

[KKluckers]

Those are some great pics. Thanks for sharing. Love the rooster too.

 

[JenniferJoIN]

Wow.... you had pips all over the place!

 

[MaransGuy]

Just got home and am up to 5 chicks and 2 new pips. I still have all 8 Marans left to pip (candled again this a.m. and still moving around) plus one more EE cross to pip. I think the Marans are going to be a day late. I am so happy with how this hatch is going compared to previous hatches last year. Things seem to be going "normally" for a change!

Richard

 

[Freebie]

That is a very pretty rooster. Do you happen to have a picture of the hen? I mean other than her bottom.

 

[IHeartChickens]

I would like to see pictures of the hen too.

Your photos are just fantastic! I felt like I was right there for the hatch of that perfect little chick.