Deerhen Project

[E flowers]

It usually works better to collect the eggs for a few days, then give them to the hen all at once. That way they all hatch about the same time.

Adding eggs every day is not convenient (staggered hatch) and is not the "natural" way to do things either (a hen will naturally lay an egg every day or so when she is not broody, then if she goes broody she will start sitting on the whole clutch at once and stop laying.)

Staggered hatches are not a disaster, but they are a bit of a nuisance, and they are pretty easy to avoid.


Hopefully it will go well!

I meant once the ones under her start hatching I'll add the indoor chicks cause they'll be hatching first. I'll keep the indoor chicks a day or two to give the others a better chance at hatching without her leaving.
The other eggs were pretty much laid one day after the other by cookie. I suppose I could've collected them then gave them to her but I was afraid she wouldn't stay broody without any eggs at all (she was on an empty nest). And I was also worried about egg fertility with the oldest not being incubated quickly enough.

 

[NatJ]

I meant once the ones under her start hatching I'll add the indoor chicks cause they'll be hatching first. I'll keep the indoor chicks a day or two to give the others a better chance at hatching without her leaving.

Yes, I understood that part.

The other eggs were pretty much laid one day after the other by cookie. I suppose I could've collected them then gave them to her but I was afraid she wouldn't stay broody without any eggs at all (she was on an empty nest). And I was also worried about egg fertility with the oldest not being incubated quickly enough.

One way to keep a hen on the nest in that case: give her a fake egg to sit on, while you collect the real ones you want her to hatch. Then give her the real ones when you have the amount you want.

As regards fertility, they should be fine for at least a week, if you just sit them safely in your house (anything between "cool basement" and "room temperature" is generally acceptable, at any humidity your house happens to have.) So you can collect a week's worth of eggs and give them to the hen all at once. For eggs stored longer than a week, the hatch rate does go down, less or more depending on the exact storage conditions.

 

[E flowers]

Yes, I understood that part.


One way to keep a hen on the nest in that case: give her a fake egg to sit on, while you collect the real ones you want her to hatch. Then give her the real ones when you have the amount you want.

As regards fertility, they should be fine for at least a week, if you just sit them safely in your house (anything between "cool basement" and "room temperature" is generally acceptable, at any humidity your house happens to have.) So you can collect a week's worth of eggs and give them to the hen all at once. For eggs stored longer than a week, the hatch rate does go down, less or more depending on the exact storage conditions.

I have some old fake eggs somewhere but I have absolutely no idea where they'd be. I also don't have too much money to buy extra stuff like that. I'm stretching it a bit with the chicks as it is. But what's done is done I suppose. I'll deal with the consequences.

 

[NatJ]

I have some old fake eggs somewhere but I have absolutely no idea where they'd be. I also don't have too much money to buy extra stuff like that. I'm stretching it a bit with the chicks as it is. But what's done is done I suppose. I'll deal with the consequences.

I agree, there's nothing to change about the way you are doing things now. I'm just making suggestions for the next time a similar situation happens. For example, if the fake eggs turn up when you are looking for something else, you'll have them to use in the future.

Fake eggs usually seem overpriced to me, when they are actually marketed to backyard chicken-keepers. Various people have used things like:
golf balls
smooth/round rocks
avocado pits
plastic or wooden "Easter" eggs (shop the after-holiday sale, or ask someone with kids if they have a few left from the previous year.)
wooden eggs from craft/hobby stores
a chunk of wood, shaped into an approximate egg (use any knife or woodworking tools that you already have)

As long as it is more-or-less smooth, round, and egg-sized, a hen is usually not too fussy.

And some hens are happy to stay broody on an empty nest, although I can't say whether your particular hen would.

 

[E flowers]

I agree, there's nothing to change about the way you are doing things now. I'm just making suggestions for the next time a similar situation happens. For example, if the fake eggs turn up when you are looking for something else, you'll have them to use in the future.

Fake eggs usually seem overpriced to me, when they are actually marketed to backyard chicken-keepers. Various people have used things like:
golf balls
smooth/round rocks
avocado pits
plastic or wooden "Easter" eggs (shop the after-holiday sale, or ask someone with kids if they have a few left from the previous year.)
wooden eggs from craft/hobby stores
a chunk of wood, shaped into an approximate egg (use any knife or woodworking tools that you already have)

As long as it is more-or-less smooth, round, and egg-sized, a hen is usually not too fussy.

And some hens are happy to stay broody on an empty nest, although I can't say whether your particular hen would.

This is her second time going broody. She's I'd say a little over 3yrs old now. She's gonna have a handful with all these chicks. If all the eggs end up hatching she'll end up with 9.

 

[The Moonshiner]

For the white tail, you will want the Dominant White gene. It turns all black into white, but leaves the red/brown colors alone.

The wild-type color of a Brown Leghorn, plus Dominant White, makes the color called Red Pyle in Old English Game Bantams. Cackle Hatchery has some photos of them:
https://www.cacklehatchery.com/product/red-pyle-old-english-game-bantam/
If you look through the photos, you will see that some of them have more white and less red/gold/brown coloring, and some have less white and more of the other color.

You could selectively breed for the ones that have the amount of white and the amount of brown that you want.

To get the Dominant White gene, maybe just cross in a White Leghorn. For example, if you cross a Welsummer rooster with a White Leghorn hen, all chicks will look white, probably with a few black dots (because Dominant White is a bit leaky when a chicken has just one copy of the gene.)

Taking a daughter from that and breeding to a Welsummer rooster again, the chicks should divide into four color groups:
--white with leakage of black and maybe red/brown
--black, maybe with leakage of red/brown
--approximately Welsummer-colored
--like Welsummer coloring, but with white instead of the black

Take one of the ones that is like a Welsummer but with white, and breed to some more Welsummers, and you should get a 50/50 mix of birds with Welsummer color and birds that have the Welsummer-with-white coloring. Continuing to breed them with Welsummers will keep giving the same results.

You can eventually interbreed the ones that have Dominant White, and get some offspring to breed true for the trait (no longer produce some chicks that show black.)

If you start with a flock of pure Welsummers, it would be easy to add one or a few White Leghorn hens, and for quite a few generations you can have a flock with pure Welsummers and with some Leghorn-mixes that have Dominant White. As you see which ones are best for your purposes, you may decide to keep having both types, or you may switch over to having just one type or just the other type (pure Welsummers vs. Welsummers with a bit of White Leghorn mixed in.)


I notice from some of your other threads that you are interested in Welsummers. They would probably be a good breed to start with, since I think they have most of the traits you want. You may even be able to start with pure Welsummers and have exactly what you want other than the white tail. Mixing in a little bit of White Leghorn can get you the white tail and may increase the flightiness and foraging by a little bit.

You won't be able to use dominate white on gold duckwing and maintain or breed for any decent amount of the females duckwing pattern staying or showing.
They'll always have way more white then just mostly the tail.
It's also all gonna depend on what's underneath the leghorns dominate white.
I've heard all kinds of stories about all the stuff it could be but personally never found much.
Would love for the OP to use some to see what shows up though.

 

[NatJ]

You won't be able to use dominate white on gold duckwing and maintain or breed for any decent amount of the females duckwing pattern staying or showing.
They'll always have way more white then just mostly the tail.

Yes, which is why I provided a source with pictures of Red Pyle chickens (which should be gold or red duckwing with Dominant White.) It's one of those cases where I figured a picture would be better than a lot more words.

And a bit later in the thread, OP decided that White Pattern Gold Wheaten in the chicken calculator is what they really want (and I agree that is a good choice for a chicken that has a white tail with a large amount of brown in the rest of the feathers.)

It's also all gonna depend on what's underneath the leghorns dominate white.
I've heard all kinds of stories about all the stuff it could be but personally never found much.
Would love for the OP to use some to see what shows up though.

I've also heard about all the stuff it could have, but I haven't been in a position to try it myself and see. I would also love to see pictures of what shows up in such a cross!

 

[troyer]

I meant once the ones under her start hatching I'll add the indoor chicks cause they'll be hatching first. I'll keep the indoor chicks a day or two to give the others a better chance at hatching without her leaving.
The other eggs were pretty much laid one day after the other by cookie. I suppose I could've collected them then gave them to her but I was afraid she wouldn't stay broody without any eggs at all (she was on an empty nest). And I was also worried about egg fertility with the oldest not being incubated quickly enough.

I did an experiment with a hen that was slightly larger than a bantam and very broody. I gave her a nest box that was 24" deep, 16" wide and 16" tall. I filled it with hay, straw and dried grasses. I let her lay as many eggs as she wanted, meaning that I did not remove any.
She layed 28 eggs and went broody, the eggs were double stacked in the nest.
A week after she started setting I candled them and took out six clears. She hatched 22 chicks out of 22 eggs and raised them all to maturity.
I kept her inside a coop for the first two weeks and after that they free ranged as they pleased during the day and were cooped at night.
I've had several hens hatch 16-19 eggs in the past but decided that I prefer if they don't go over 16 chicks at a time and much prefer if they stay in the 8-12 chick range.

 

[E flowers]

Ok so this chick started hatching Tuesday night at around 1:53 Aug 20th/21st. I checked on it through the night and it wasn't doing much pushing or pecking. Maybe a little but it seemed far too slow so I broke some tiny pieces of shell off around the pip with needle nose tweezers (carefully! Of course).

A couple more hours and still not much but the baby was really strong acting so I broke a seam around about half of the shell like they naturally do on their own but still enough where it needed its own strength to break it. And late in the morning after it still hadn't broken through I decided enough was enough and brought it out to Teryaki while I was feeding everyone.
A few more hours later and I went back out to check on her and it had hatched! She didn't let me see it though and I wasn't about to mess with her.

We'll see if this chick looks like it's daddy and maybe my theory about them being sexlink will turn out true. Fully white males and white females with caramel faces.

 

[E flowers]

Also I decided to move it because the other two eggs in the incubator failed. One didn't even develop a day or two before failing and the other was supposed to be a day behind the one that hatched. Hopefully no more fail.