You got yourself a lot of boys. Good luck!I know the February Hatch-Along is done, but I just wanted to post a progress photo. This is some of my chicks hatched on Feb. 4-5 - they are 4 weeks old today!
Happy 1-month birthday, babies!
I'd been messing with them a little, filling feeders and such, and trying to get a good angle for a photo. So they were stirred up. I've noticed that when this happens, the pullets run to the farthest wall or corner to hide, and the cockerels come up front all full of bravado and curiosity - as good little roosters should! They're actually about evenly balanced.
Makes sense. I know sometimes cockerels fight when their housed together.
Yeah I am still waiting for my very first eggs to arrive to very first incubate for my very first chickens and you guys are all killing me reading this thread lol
oh so exciting!!!!!!!!!! When should they be arriving??? Good luck! I have some shipped eggs in the incubator right now and have more arriving on the 17th. LOL
This week they said! I didnt even know there was gonna be a ship delay till after I ordered so I am praying they hurry. I am already planning my next and want to order silkie and cochin bantam eggs but gotta get thru this one first. All this waiting is killing me
you should join the March hatch a long (think they will hatch in March if they arrive this week). what breeds are you getting this time?
I ordered quail because i expected them to be here around 2 weeks ago to then do chickens but she is going to send me a few chicken eggs, Bantams - I think silver dutch, fleur and another i forget the name. I was just reading the March thread. If not I will make aprils LOL. I will order the cochin/silkies as soon as I am close to end of this batch
Anyway...that's my hatch story. Lessons learned for sure.I'm sorry to hear thatUpdate on my hatch...not good news unfortunately.
So as per my original post, had LOTS of ebay eggs come in. Good news is, most of them were fertile and developing and no real issues with shipping.
Now the bad news....
I have a Farm Innovators incubator that has served me well the last year or so for hatching eggs. This year, my dear hubby built me a homemade incubator. I split up my hatching eggs between the two because the shipments arrived staggered. Towards lockdown, after candling all the eggs, i took out the infertile ones and consolidated everything into the Farm Innovators incubator.
Everything was going swell, had 4 eggs hatch, then 2 more. Then something bad happened...not sure exactly when but the temp stopped being regulated correctly in the incubator. As I said, had been working fine and was calibrated, etc. for several other hatches.
Had two egg babies die before getting out of the shell and none of the remaining 20+ eggs hatched.
Very very disappointing - lots of money wasted unfortunately. I did get 4 healthy baby chicks out of the hatch - two black silkies, a chick from one of my golden comet eggs, and a mixed chick from one of my hens - green egg from an easter egger. Baby chick is yellow with black spots and its feathers are coming in almost in a cuckoo pattern which makes no sense because I have zero birds like that
that's such a bummer, but at least four hatched! I had a similar experience.... Ordered 24 shipped fertile hatching eggs. About 13 made it to lock down. Then on day 19, the incubator overheated and I was up until 3am trying to regulate the temperature. Anyway, 4 hatched total so at least I got a few!
