What a beauty! Glad you found homes for 4 of themSo I am 12 for 12 so far in this staggered hatch. 11 olive egger/silkie crosses and this last one, a splash ameraucana/silkie cross that came out this lovely silver color.
4 of the olive egger/silkies went to their new home today!
No more chicks until Christmas Day, though I expect they will hatch on the 24th.
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Exciting!!!
Congratulations, they are beautiful!
Day 14 for the Christmas hatch, all 9 still looking good.
Awesome!
Speaking from my own experience with the Legbar/?? (suspected to be EE) crosses, I'd be willing to bet that some of those "pullets" are roos. Like you, I thought I had a 8 to 3 ratio in favor of pullets. I ran it past experienced members here as well who also agreed on my tentative ID. I ended up with . . . 6 roos and 5 pullets. At the time I thought they were purebred Legbars (they were supposed to be). One thing I did notice, for whatever reason, the roos' little tail feathers came in much later than the pullets. They had "chick butts" for a lot longer.This was my first winter hatch, and it appears that I ended up with 11 pullets and only 2 cockerels. Is anyone else experiencing high pullet ratios? I'm wondering if it has something to do with time of year?
I realize they're only 2 weeks old and I could be wrong about sex, but 2 crosses were sex-linked and seem 90% likely to all be pullets. The other 2 were crosses of auto-sexing breeds, and certainly look like they have sorted themselves out. I would be interested in any opinions, if you think differently...
Here are the Legbar-Olive Egger chicks
Cockerel
Pullets
And the Legbar-Dominiques...
Cockerel
Pullets
My girls' egg production dropped off a cliff just about the time I started thinking about separating them for breeding & collecting eggs. So I was only able to collect eggs from my rock star hens who were still laying (in some cases while also molting!).
Trying to figure out some explanation for 100% hatch rate with 85% pullets, other than dumb luck
Definitely makes me want to hatch again next winter...
That is interesting about the little tail feathers. Our one little guy is taking forever to grown in his!
Not sure how much difference it made, but I played recordings when there was a lull in hatching (after pipping), after the first 2 hatched and then fell asleep. A couple others hatched and then there was enough peeping in the incubator. Not sure if it sped anything up, but it made me feel better to be doing something to try to move things along that didn't risk anything inside the bater, like if I had opened it up to candle, etc.
