For those who may be familiar with me on here...I can be somewhat unorthodox in my methods. Ok, ok...I'm just plain extreme in my methods.
The following is one of these...
Last Saturday at 2pm, I gathered the eggs my fleet of broody hens had been setting on. The eggs sat out in the sun and wind until I brought them in the house at supper time. I candled the eggs at 2am Sunday and discovered the marked eggs were ready to hatch and one chick had internally pipped. I placed the eggs I sorted through in the incubator.
Sunday night I candled and saw three had internally pipped. Three Old English Game Bantam chicks have hatched and a forth is pipping. Those eggs sat 12 hours at the point of hatching with no heat and the chicks are hatching fine with no assistance from me.
Even more unbelievable is the embryo I candled tonight.
I didn't candle right to the bottom of the pails knowing there may have been developing eggs. I've had an extremely broody hen who hatched keets. I left her with one keet...but she decided she needed to claim a new nest AND set in addition to raising the keet. She fought to sit on this nest with an OEGB for about a week. I wasn't wanting more "unplanned" oegbs chicks at the moment but I candled the rest of the eggs last night because it's been bothering me. Five eggs were worthy of setting. (4 oegb and 1 EE) I marked them with a blue stripe length wise around the egg.
I candled the eggs tonight. Three oegb eggs are dead and the forth EE egg...I can't see into it.
One oegb embryo is alive and moving!
(My camera doesn't like candling pics. At least you can see a dark spot. It does move.)
I'm not sure the embryo will make it to the end of development after being cold for 60 hours. We'll see.
But I wanted to share this information to show how resilient chicks and embryos can be. I'll keep this updated as long as the embryo survives or until a chick hatches.
The following is one of these...
Last Saturday at 2pm, I gathered the eggs my fleet of broody hens had been setting on. The eggs sat out in the sun and wind until I brought them in the house at supper time. I candled the eggs at 2am Sunday and discovered the marked eggs were ready to hatch and one chick had internally pipped. I placed the eggs I sorted through in the incubator.
Sunday night I candled and saw three had internally pipped. Three Old English Game Bantam chicks have hatched and a forth is pipping. Those eggs sat 12 hours at the point of hatching with no heat and the chicks are hatching fine with no assistance from me.
Even more unbelievable is the embryo I candled tonight.
I didn't candle right to the bottom of the pails knowing there may have been developing eggs. I've had an extremely broody hen who hatched keets. I left her with one keet...but she decided she needed to claim a new nest AND set in addition to raising the keet. She fought to sit on this nest with an OEGB for about a week. I wasn't wanting more "unplanned" oegbs chicks at the moment but I candled the rest of the eggs last night because it's been bothering me. Five eggs were worthy of setting. (4 oegb and 1 EE) I marked them with a blue stripe length wise around the egg.
I candled the eggs tonight. Three oegb eggs are dead and the forth EE egg...I can't see into it.
One oegb embryo is alive and moving!
(My camera doesn't like candling pics. At least you can see a dark spot. It does move.)
I'm not sure the embryo will make it to the end of development after being cold for 60 hours. We'll see.
But I wanted to share this information to show how resilient chicks and embryos can be. I'll keep this updated as long as the embryo survives or until a chick hatches.
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