I found myself needing to do a very impractical emergency winter hatch, after the family’s favorite chicken died suddenly and for no apparent reason. We want him to live on, so we decided to hatch some eggs from one of his girlfriends. We were planning on doing that in the spring anyway, but his sudden death has changed our plans. I'm dreading this a little bit, being that we're at the start of winter in the Northeast, but the kids really loved that cockerel, and even my husband (otherwise indifferent to the chickens) said we should do it, so we're doing it.
I set the eggs this morning - 11 beautiful green eggs, in a Little Giant still air incubator, the same one I used last time. I added a handheld fan to it again, two calibrated probe thermometers, and one calibrated hygrometer. Aquarium tubing to add water through with a syringe without opening the lid. I learned a lot of lessons from my previous hatch with this finicky incubator, so I’m feeling more confident this time. Day 1 was smooth sailing, unlike day 1 last time when I wanted to throw the whole thing out the window
If you want to check out my previous hatch thread, you can find it here.
A bit of context. The departed cockerel came from said hatch, and was instantly everybody's favorite. Full of character and hilarity, very social, smart and friendly. The perfect pet chicken, sweet until the end with not a drop of aggression for the whole 7 months of his life (which is why we want more of him). He was a Red Partridge Orpington that came from Papa’s Poultry in CA (the eggs flew coast to coast to MA). Sadly, we couldn’t keep him because we can’t have roosters where we live. We rehomed him about a month or so ago, after he started crowing, with a friend of mine who lives on a small farm. The kids missed him, but we went to visit him occasionally. My friend was temporarily keeping him in a tractor coop with two females - one that she says is an Ameraucana (I'm no breed expert at all but after looking it up, it looks to me like she's actually an Easter Egger) and her grown chick (who is about the same age as our boy). They’d free range with the main flock to get used to each other, but then go back to the tractor. Our boy was in love with the chick, but she’s not laying yet. He was trying with the mom, too, but she wasn’t always letting him. The only eggs we have now to work with are hers, and it’s not clear if they got fertilized or not... He certainly tried, but I guess we’ll see.
Last time I brooded the chicks in what I called a "chicken TV brooder" in our upstairs hallway for 3 weeks, and everybody loved the experience. We had no problems with dust or smell. The kids loved having the chicks right next to their bedroom, and even my husband said he enjoyed the peaceful sound of birds chirping in the hallway. So we’ll do that again, but with a bigger box so they can stay in it longer. With winter already here, these chicks will need to spend several months in the house. When they outgrow the box, I can section off part of the basement for them. And then deal with integration gradually, after the weather starts warming up...This isn’t an ideal situation and I’d much rather hatch in the spring, but we want chicks from this cockerel for sentimental reasons, and the family is committed to making it work. I’ll probably have questions as the saga unfolds, and would appreciate your feedback!
Here's a picture of our beloved:
And the mom of the eggs:
I'm so curious to see what the babies end up looking like! (if we get any babies
). What do you guys think about mom's breed? I'm thinking she's an EE? Lays green eggs - here are the ones I set:
She seems to have a dilute gene because her tail is blue. I'm not sure how chicken dilute genes work. I know on cats they affect the entire body, but on this hen the beard is unaffected and still quite black. Do they affect only parts of the body? What would that mean for the chicks?
As for the beard, I thought I could figure out how many copies of the beard gene mom had, by looking at her daughter, who doesn't have a beard. So I was thinking mom was heterozygous (one copy) and the babies would have a 50% chance. But then my friend said she's not 100% sure the daughter came from this hen's egg, as another hen might have snuck into the broody's nest and laid one of her own eggs there. Looking at the daughter though, I'm thinking she might have a dilute gene too, just by the looks of her - whoever her mom is, we know that her dad is a Whiting Grizzly (the kind used for fly fishing). So she has a bit of the grizzly pattern, but the blacks are blue-gray-ish. Here's a picture of her with her mom:
I'm not sure if my friend has any other chickens with a dilute gene, I can ask (or go visit and look at the chickens again... She has a lot so I haven't paid attention to any specific ones). But maybe that means that this is indeed the EE's daughter, and the EE has one copy so we might get a mix of beards and no beards.
Does anybody have any experience crossing the partridge pattern with this kind of EE pattern? Any guesses on what the chicks might look like (beards and dilutions aside)?
This is going to be fun
I set the eggs this morning - 11 beautiful green eggs, in a Little Giant still air incubator, the same one I used last time. I added a handheld fan to it again, two calibrated probe thermometers, and one calibrated hygrometer. Aquarium tubing to add water through with a syringe without opening the lid. I learned a lot of lessons from my previous hatch with this finicky incubator, so I’m feeling more confident this time. Day 1 was smooth sailing, unlike day 1 last time when I wanted to throw the whole thing out the window
If you want to check out my previous hatch thread, you can find it here.A bit of context. The departed cockerel came from said hatch, and was instantly everybody's favorite. Full of character and hilarity, very social, smart and friendly. The perfect pet chicken, sweet until the end with not a drop of aggression for the whole 7 months of his life (which is why we want more of him). He was a Red Partridge Orpington that came from Papa’s Poultry in CA (the eggs flew coast to coast to MA). Sadly, we couldn’t keep him because we can’t have roosters where we live. We rehomed him about a month or so ago, after he started crowing, with a friend of mine who lives on a small farm. The kids missed him, but we went to visit him occasionally. My friend was temporarily keeping him in a tractor coop with two females - one that she says is an Ameraucana (I'm no breed expert at all but after looking it up, it looks to me like she's actually an Easter Egger) and her grown chick (who is about the same age as our boy). They’d free range with the main flock to get used to each other, but then go back to the tractor. Our boy was in love with the chick, but she’s not laying yet. He was trying with the mom, too, but she wasn’t always letting him. The only eggs we have now to work with are hers, and it’s not clear if they got fertilized or not... He certainly tried, but I guess we’ll see.
Last time I brooded the chicks in what I called a "chicken TV brooder" in our upstairs hallway for 3 weeks, and everybody loved the experience. We had no problems with dust or smell. The kids loved having the chicks right next to their bedroom, and even my husband said he enjoyed the peaceful sound of birds chirping in the hallway. So we’ll do that again, but with a bigger box so they can stay in it longer. With winter already here, these chicks will need to spend several months in the house. When they outgrow the box, I can section off part of the basement for them. And then deal with integration gradually, after the weather starts warming up...This isn’t an ideal situation and I’d much rather hatch in the spring, but we want chicks from this cockerel for sentimental reasons, and the family is committed to making it work. I’ll probably have questions as the saga unfolds, and would appreciate your feedback!
Here's a picture of our beloved:
And the mom of the eggs:
I'm so curious to see what the babies end up looking like! (if we get any babies
). What do you guys think about mom's breed? I'm thinking she's an EE? Lays green eggs - here are the ones I set:She seems to have a dilute gene because her tail is blue. I'm not sure how chicken dilute genes work. I know on cats they affect the entire body, but on this hen the beard is unaffected and still quite black. Do they affect only parts of the body? What would that mean for the chicks?
As for the beard, I thought I could figure out how many copies of the beard gene mom had, by looking at her daughter, who doesn't have a beard. So I was thinking mom was heterozygous (one copy) and the babies would have a 50% chance. But then my friend said she's not 100% sure the daughter came from this hen's egg, as another hen might have snuck into the broody's nest and laid one of her own eggs there. Looking at the daughter though, I'm thinking she might have a dilute gene too, just by the looks of her - whoever her mom is, we know that her dad is a Whiting Grizzly (the kind used for fly fishing). So she has a bit of the grizzly pattern, but the blacks are blue-gray-ish. Here's a picture of her with her mom:
I'm not sure if my friend has any other chickens with a dilute gene, I can ask (or go visit and look at the chickens again... She has a lot so I haven't paid attention to any specific ones). But maybe that means that this is indeed the EE's daughter, and the EE has one copy so we might get a mix of beards and no beards.
Does anybody have any experience crossing the partridge pattern with this kind of EE pattern? Any guesses on what the chicks might look like (beards and dilutions aside)?
This is going to be fun
