Emergency winter hatch thread (Partridge Orpington x Easter Egger)

[K0k0shka]

They are gorgeous!! I have my fingers and toes crossed for you!! Mama is an EE for sure. If she was a purebred Ameraucana or Araucana her eggs would be blue.
Question, are the eggs more green or more olive colored?? Just curiosity and I know sometimes pictures don't always look true to colors. Love the blue in her tail!! BEST OF LUCK!!

Thank you! Yeah, it's hard to get true colors in pictures, especially taken on a phone in low light... Her eggs vary in color, actually (and in size). Some are lighter and more green, others are a little darker and more on the olive side... None are blue though, that's for sure. I always though she was an EE, but when my friend said Ameraucana, I had to do some looking up because I'm not very experienced with chicken breeds myself, but it looks like she can't be an Ameraucana because of the egg color, and because her own color/pattern isn't one of the recognized breed colors. What is that color called? I've seen it on EEs a lot.

 

[K0k0shka]

Here are some photos of my setup. Day 2 today and everything is going smoothly. SO much easier than last time now that I know what this particular incubator needs!

Here's the handheld fan I'm using, because the incubator doesn't have its own fan and the temperature varies WILDLY throughout without anything moving the air. I wrapped the fan in cheesecloth. Last time, I thought its protective cage was enough, and the incredibly soft floppy silicone blades couldn't possibly hurt a chick. Well, I was wrong. On hatch day, I woke up to blood splatters all over the fan! There was no serious damage, but clearly one of the chicks must have gotten a toe in between the slats, and the soft silicone must not have felt so soft on the tiny toe. This time I'm wrapping the fan now, so I don't forget (last time I wrapped it after I saw the blood, and there were no more injuries after that). The chicks love standing right on top of the fan for some reason, so it has to be really safe.

This is the only place I have room in there to stick the fan in. It's sort of blowing down, and it's right up against the wall on the back so that's not the best for the intake, but even that makes it a whole lot better in terms of evening out the temperature.

I have 2 calibrated probe thermometers in there, in addition to the incubator's own thermometer. I'm using the fake Easter eggs to tape the probes to, so they are at top-of-the-egg level as they should, without being taped to the real eggs. I gave them large clear plastic plates like the one the incubator's thermometer has, presumably so the plate can sit on top of the eggs, but the turner keeps tilting the eggs so much that the plate slides and falls off, the probe falls too low and reads the wrong temperature. It's working out much better now that the probes are taped down and can't move anymore, they're at the right level (the temperature varies significantly at different points of the vertical space), and they tilt with the eggs without falling. Also, I placed the eggs in a circle around the heater, so that they're all at an equal distance from it. The fan helps a lot, but the temperature is still nowhere near even throughout the incubator, so placement really helps to give them all an even temperature (also helps that I didn't pack the incubator full this time, and thus have room to move things around).

The hygrometer, squished against the wall, because that's where I have room. It reads 12 percentage points too low, so the humidity is actually 46%.

The temperature has been holding steady so far, cycling between about 99 and 100.5 degrees, with no drastic dips or spikes like last time (so far).

 

[ackie]

so this is tangentially related... because winter hatching.

mine are outside with their momma in a brooder, with food and water of course. are there enough daylight hours for them to eat enough to grow appropriately? or do I need to supplement light?

 

[LMN1966]

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:

View attachment 2421874

And the mom of the eggs:

View attachment 2421876 View attachment 2421878

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:
View attachment 2421879

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:
View attachment 2421883

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 can't wait to see the outcome on these. Please keep us posted. Gorgeous birds!

 

[NatJ]

mine are outside with their momma in a brooder, with food and water of course. are there enough daylight hours for them to eat enough to grow appropriately? or do I need to supplement light?

Probably fine.
As long as their crops are full at bedtime, they can be digesting it through most of the night, so the difference in daylight hours doesn't make a big difference.

 

[NatJ]

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?

I thought blue was supposed to affect all black on the body, so the dilute tail and black beard have me puzzled too. But photos of Production Blue hens often show the neck & head darker than the rest of them, so maybe it just does that sometimes.

Are you familiar with the genetics of chicken egg colors?
Some of her daughters will probably lay green eggs, but she might produce 50% brown egg layers. And if she produces both types, you might be able to sort them visually by comb type (the blue egg locus is closely linked with the pea comb locus.)

 

[K0k0shka]

I thought blue was supposed to affect all black on the body, so the dilute tail and black beard have me puzzled too. But photos of Production Blue hens often show the neck & head darker than the rest of them, so maybe it just does that sometimes.

Are you familiar with the genetics of chicken egg colors?
Some of her daughters will probably lay green eggs, but she might produce 50% brown egg layers. And if she produces both types, you might be able to sort them visually by comb type (the blue egg locus is closely linked with the pea comb locus.)

I'm not very familiar with chicken genetics, just bits and pieces I've read on here or while googling. I thought green egg layer x brown egg layer = olive eggs... But I guess it could be either or as well? Some green and some brown from the offspring? My orps are 31 weeks old and not laying yet... So unless the EE in the mix affects the timeline, I'll have a LONG wait to find out!

 

[NatJ]

I'm not very familiar with chicken genetics, just bits and pieces I've read on here or while googling. I thought green egg layer x brown egg layer = olive eggs... But I guess it could be either or as well? Some green and some brown from the offspring? My orps are 31 weeks old and not laying yet... So unless the EE in the mix affects the timeline, I'll have a LONG wait to find out!

Basic egg color info:

Brown is a layer on the outside of the egg. It's affected by multiple genes, and no-one's got it really figured out. If you just average the mother's shade of brown egg with what the father would lay (if he were female), you come out fairly close. White is just the absence of brown.

Blue vs. not-blue is a color that goes all the way through the shell. Blue is when it has no brown, green is when it has a brown layer on top of it.

The blue egg locus is closely linked to the pea comb locus.
So when you cross Ameraucanas (pea/blue) with Leghorns (not-pea/not-blue), and then you interbreed the offspring, you can pretty much find the blue-layers by just picking the ones with pea combs. That's why Easter Eggers tend to have pea combs (easy way to screen for the blue egg gene), but crossovers can happen, so a few pea-comb Easter Eggers lay not-blue eggs.

Different breeds have different pairings of pea vs. blue egg:
Ameraucana is pea/blue egg
Brahma is pea/not-blue egg
Cream Legbar is not-pea/blue egg
Orpington is not-pea/not-blue

And all of those "blue" eggs can just as easily be "green" if the hen also has the genes for brown.

So if the hen in your case produces some chicks with single combs (not-pea), then those chicks are also likely to lay brown eggs (not-blue.) And her chicks with pea combs are likely to lay green eggs (blue with a brown overlay). Those are probabilities, not certainties.

 

[K0k0shka]

Basic egg color info:

Brown is a layer on the outside of the egg. It's affected by multiple genes, and no-one's got it really figured out. If you just average the mother's shade of brown egg with what the father would lay (if he were female), you come out fairly close. White is just the absence of brown.

Blue vs. not-blue is a color that goes all the way through the shell. Blue is when it has no brown, green is when it has a brown layer on top of it.

The blue egg locus is closely linked to the pea comb locus.
So when you cross Ameraucanas (pea/blue) with Leghorns (not-pea/not-blue), and then you interbreed the offspring, you can pretty much find the blue-layers by just picking the ones with pea combs. That's why Easter Eggers tend to have pea combs (easy way to screen for the blue egg gene), but crossovers can happen, so a few pea-comb Easter Eggers lay not-blue eggs.

Different breeds have different pairings of pea vs. blue egg:
Ameraucana is pea/blue egg
Brahma is pea/not-blue egg
Cream Legbar is not-pea/blue egg
Orpington is not-pea/not-blue

And all of those "blue" eggs can just as easily be "green" if the hen also has the genes for brown.

So if the hen in your case produces some chicks with single combs (not-pea), then those chicks are also likely to lay brown eggs (not-blue.) And her chicks with pea combs are likely to lay green eggs (blue with a brown overlay). Those are probabilities, not certainties.

Very interesting, thank you for the detailed information! I will certainly update the thread once the chicks grow up and start laying. For science!

 

[ackie]

Probably fine.
As long as their crops are full at bedtime, they can be digesting it through most of the night, so the difference in daylight hours doesn't make a big difference.

Good point. They have constant access to food so it should be fine then.