December hatch along

[BlueBaby]

we will be hatching on the same day then.

Cool! I hope I can get those green eggs to be a bit bigger than they are in the offspring.

 

[Compost King]

What is your breeding plan to increase egg size on a specific color?

I just recently gave up on my Olive Egger Sex Link project because it looked like it would end up taking up all my breeding pens in order to get what I wanted. I also won't live here long enough to pull it off because I will need to breed males just to see what egg color they shoot before I can cull them.

 

[BlueBaby]

What is your breeding plan to increase egg size on a specific color?

I just recently gave up on my Olive Egger Sex Link project because it looked like it would end up taking up all my breeding pens in order to get what I wanted. I also won't live here long enough to pull it off because I will need to breed males just to see what egg color they shoot before I can cull them.

The CCLB hen's that I have and had lay the light blue eggs, but they were too small in size for my taste. So, I bred the CCLB roo to my Splash Australorp hen to get the green egg layer that would most likely lay more eggs. I didn't go with the one's that people call Americana/EE because I don't like the cheek's on them. Now I am trying to see if I can get bigger green eggs that will also have the NN and the crest on the head's.

 

[Compost King]

CCLB is probably the best breed to work with when dealing with colored eggs, good choice

 

[Matieus27]

I never let myself do that. I just find the risk of extra light on them and extra time with the incubator open isn't worth fulfilling my curiosity. Except for this time :sigh:

Well after day three I take the lid off my incubator everyday for about 10 or so minutes up until day 18 then I leave it on

 

[Matieus27]

But I do find myself if the eggs haven’t pipped yet checking on occasion to see if they are pipped into the aircell so that I can make sure if my suspected pip site isn’t correct that the pip site is not against the floor that way everyone gets out ok

 

[mandelyn]

I woke up to pips! 1 in each hatcher, an Olive Egger and a .... whatever I'm going to call these Twentse/Legbar/EE/Niederrheiners that are coming out of blue eggs.

Supposedly a long time ago the Niederrheiners were auto sexing. We'll see who gets the head poof of the Legbar or the chipmunk cheeks of the EE... it would be crazy cool if I scored some barred partridge colors with the head crest, cheeks, walnut comb AND the blue eggs. Wishful thinking I bet. I'll definitely be scrutinizing chick fluff for any auto sexing features. My plan is to hatch like crazy from that group and pull out the ones I like and see if I can get them going into something consistent. The core traits being colored eggs, large size, nifty feathers, winter hardiness... bonus points if I can get them back into auto sexing without losing size. I don't want to breed back to Legbar if I can help it though.

The Olive Eggs have the same dad, those daughters will get bred back to Marans. Keeping it simple there. In theory it give them a double dose of green egg, going back to the Marans darkens it.

Trying not to get excited or count them before they hatch. I'm still traumatized from last year's terrible hatches, so I have this fear that out of all those eggs I'll only get a handful. Every egg that went into lockdown had movement, so I'm hopeful!

If the cheap incubators don't make reliable hatchers, then I might have to cave and buy the matching cabinet hatcher to the Sportsman cabinet. That would just be... so terrible... the way it would fill all 8 brooders in one go...

 

[Mosey2003]

Yeah, that does sound terrible. But, you might just have to suck it up and suffer

 

[mandelyn]

5 pips, 1 zipping! He's finally getting chatty, they've been pretty quiet and making me nervous!

He's blue, so far it's all I can tell. But will he have his daddy's cheeks!? The first one out is hardly ever a pullet.

 

[Mosey2003]

I wonder why that is... I've kind of casually noticed that too, when I can tell. I'm really sad that I forgot to check the air cells before I set them to see if that method from an olllllld poultry book actually worked for sexing eggs. By the time I remembered, it was too late. I should see if cold seems to have any effect on this batch though, at least.