Growing my little flock

[DonyaQuick]

Checkin' egg fertility for the cochins...not the ratio I was hoping for.

My assessment is...
1: ?????
2: probably nope
3: definite yes
4: definite nope
5: definite yes (it's in the glare but it's definitely a bullseye)

There is a weird, thin but wobbly outer circle on 1 which I'm guessing probably means "no" since it's really messy compared to the clear form on 3 & 5. All eggs are from the same day. So...kinda looking like just 2 good ones at the moment. I know cochins can have lower fertility but wasn't sure if that was just how fluffy they are or something else.

I won't be firing up the incubator just yet, just trying to get an early feel for the bean flock situation so I don't give a bunch of duds to a broody again like I did with Miss Chungus a couple years back. If I'm really looking at a rate of 40%, I might need to do a game of incubator roulette with those eggs.

Meanwhile, I don't think I've seen an infertile egg from main flock in a long time. Theirs are a much better candidate for going under a broody, should I get one in the coming couple months.

 

[fuzzi]

I've somehow never had an oops boy in sexed pullets. That's 17 no oopses so far I think...I was really expecting one with my cochins since they're supposedly trickier. My luck with that has to run out at some point! I think the black Ameraucanas have even less of an accuracy than the cochins do so I am perhaps setting myself up for it lol.

They were bantams, a little trickier. Most places won't even attempt to sex day-old bantams.

 

[DonyaQuick]

This big bunch of fluffy liers! They had me convinced that every single one of them in this flock was afraid of snow because of stunts like this. "Oh we have escaped! But we can't possible walk anywhere on this stuff, and we definitely can't go get our most favoritest snack in the world...you must carry us to the snack, human."

This led me to become sloppy about latching doors when going in and out at chore time, because if a chicken escaped it's not like it was going anywhere...or so I thought. But then TWO blades of grass have the audacity to poke through the snow across the field, I forget to do a door latch, and I come back to everyone marching out to murder that grass. At first glance you may think this parade is being led by Mr Monster. It is not. That's Miss Meep's sneaky white butt in the corner shoving past me because GRASS.

I guess they've just decided spring is here even though it sure doesn't look like it yet. How else do I know this other than the escaping? Dingus and her daughter Scruffy have been getting going with their sassy synchronized routine of "sounds like someone needs a bop!" whenever a squabble happens. So much hen drama right now lol.

 

[DonyaQuick]

As spring more formally arrives, trying to keep my chickens contained when I open the door is proving as futile as trying to stop the change of the seasons themselves. Everyone is so riddiculously desperate to graze upon this...uh...stinky dead grass...yum.

And in keeping with everyone being a bit bonkers, Miss Riddler is now super cuddly. She has always been one of the more standoffish hens, but suddenly she is first onto my lap wanting snuggles each morning.

Sadly no sign of any broodies so far...I think the season kicked off too late and too cold for the timing I need to stick to this year. But, I guess that also means I have my pick of who to take eggs from since everyone I expected to start laying again is doing so. Very soon I'm going to have to stop waiting and fire up the incubator. It's going to be so hard to pick which eggs from main flock...if I put everything from one day in it'd be around 12-13 eggs and probably about 10 of them fertile (due to finicky Bean egg fertility) but I feel like that's rather a lot of new chickens given I've only ever done batches of 4 before. So hard to narrow it down though! My husband isn't helping either because he just keeps saying "well we've got the space" lol.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Apparently spring time is now also turkey time??? Counted at least 24 of them this morning. The chickens aren't being afraid of them here; there's one pretty close to the side of the enclosure where they're gathered (which is why the chickens went there), it just isn't visible in the photo. They're peering at it through gaps in the windbreaks.

Meanwhile I'm giving my incubator a test run with nothing in it to make sure all is in working order. Good thing I checked - appears to be running about 2F cold inside! I can adjust it, so I think it's ok...I hope so anyway. Not sure if that's just down to it being cool for the time of year (the house is definitely running a bit chilly) or if it's something I should worry about as far as signs of possible failure are concerned. It's always been bang on and matched my other thermometers in the past, so this is the first time it's been off. It hasn't done that many runs in total, but it is a few years old.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Well, I unfortunately do now have some criteria to wittle down which eggs to choose. Looks like I won't be hatching any green eggs, just brown/pink ones. So it'll be hens from my main line so far (Meep, Scruffy, Dingus) and some bean eggs. Maybe a stripey egg to have a minimum of 4 fertile ones in case the selection of bean eggs doesn't have a great fertility rate. Since I've still been deperately hoping for a broody, I'm using the 29th as my cutoff for just-get-some-in-the-incubator-dangnabit.

Hobbit is one of my green eggers and is a lovely snuggly hen. She has a few sparse foot feathers, hence the name as a reference to hairy hobbit feet. Up til now, her main issues have been start-stop molting this winter and the bumbleboot before that. She had awful bumblefoot last year and got shards of foreign material in her foot pads. Even though I caught it early and was really on top of the treatment, it took her ages to heal up. Long after my others with the same sharp-shard-induced bumbles had fully healed, Hobbit was still needing ointment and bandages here and there. Over the coldest months she was bandage-free, but the skin in the healed area never looked quite right. Today they were starting to get kind of a weird scabby type thing going again on those weird areas. I eventually opened one up to treat it like bumblefoot, and then to my horror I pulled bits of black feather fluff out of the hole. Just...yikes. There is no way that was foreign material that got shoved in; I check her feet daily. The situation with the other foot isn't yet clear but I'm expecting something similar after a round of ointment. Now I have no idea whether the bumblefoot last year caused this somehow or if it was already an existing condition and made her more prone to the bumblefoot, but I feel SO bad for that girl right now.

Raven is my other green egger. I was waiting to see signs that she was going to stop laying and finish up her molt. We are still at 5 eggs a week or so...and so she is really the queen of scratty right now even though she is otherwise happy as a clam lol. I'm way less worried about scratty Raven than the hobbit situation...but I am freaked out enough by the Hobbit foot discovery that I would rather now wait and see a good molt from Raven first. Those two are from the same hatchery stock which does make me wonder if the crummy molting from them is a breeding thing. Won't know until next winter.

My stripey "eggers" that lay various shades of pink/brown didn't have the best of molts this year but but they all molted quickly and completely even if Harley chose a stupid month in which to do it. I've seen no other issues from them, and Meep/Scruffy/Dingus of course have been hardy girls.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Oh lawd...I dun did it. Day 1 begins. Expecting babies April 11th-ish. The only question now is: do I have enough thermometers? LOL

So this lineup is...
Top 5 - expecting 100% fertility rate:

• Dingus, she's the only one who lays those honkers in main flock.
• Meep/Scruffy/Stripey Egger probably Riddler if a Stripey
• Meep/Scruffy/Stripey Egger
• Meep/Scruffy/Stripey Egger
• Little Fuzzy...because (1) I need a Goober baby so bad (2) after a lot of going back and forth and looking at baby pics I am quite certain now that her leg issue was actually an injury she sustained around 8-12 weeks that simply healed weird. Not needing to use a roost bar and not being knocked about by her sisters has tremendously improved her iffy leg these past few months. So I'm not really worried anymore about that being a heritable problem.

Bottom 6 - expecting 0-50% fertility rate:

• Coco yesterday
• Coco today
• Cochin - Cuddles III or Yeti
• Cochin - Cuddles III or Yeti
• Cochin - probably Big Foot
• Cochin - probably Little Foot

The back-to-back Coco eggs coupled with getting such perfectly clean ones from everyone else in the past 24h are the reasons that I finally decided it was time to do it. Coco laying two days in a row never happens, and as things have been warmer it was leading to frequent mud smears on eggs.

No Sasquatch cochin egg because she often lays eggs with calcium blobs both on the outside of the shell and on the inside where they tend to float in the albumen. Also, Sassy Sasquatch has never laid a fertile one so no point trying her eggs! The other bean flock eggs have unfortunately continued to be totally hit and miss despite me having one day where the fertility rate was higher - unfortunately was too early/cold still at that point. About 10 days ago there was a round where nothing was fertile from that flock although the norm is 2-3 fertile. So I think I'm looking at only 5-8 chicks despite there being 11 eggs in there. This is also my first time doing a 100% incubator hatch start to finish with no broody involved, so I don't know whether that could also lower the expected outcome.

Or, I could be completely wrong with my pessimism in my calculations here, in which case it will surely be as my husband said: "So, 11 roosters then."

 

[DonyaQuick]

Did a bit of early candling. I know, I know, you're supposed to wait a week to candle, but I'm impatient and wanted to make sure stuff was at least happening, since I'm a little nervous about the amount of fiddling I had to do with the incubator temperature.

Checked 3 in the top row, saw good things, so I stoped there since I'm already confident with those eggs.

Checked the entire bottom row. ONE cochin egg has something going on. One other is ambiguous and the other two I'm guessing are duds (but I won't call it until quite a lot later). Coco's eggs are too dark/thick; might not be able to tell anything until close to the end.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Well I don't feel so silly now for starting with almost a dozen! Really looking like it's a fertile count of 6, although maybe 7 if I'm super lucky. That's all five of the the top row eggs showing clear development along with one cochin egg and maaaaaaybe one Coco egg. The two Coco eggs are diverging in degree of darkness in the yolk-ish area as time goes on, which makes me think something might be happening in the darkening one, although I'm not going to get my hopes up...and if there is something, I sure hope it's a GOOD something and not that I need to be sniff testing to avoid a nasty disaster...that's always been my fear of doing things in an incubator vs with a broody.

 

[fuzzi]

Well I don't feel so silly now for starting with almost a dozen! Really looking like it's a fertile count of 6, although maybe 7 if I'm super lucky. That's all five of the the top row eggs showing clear development along with one cochin egg and maaaaaaybe one Coco egg. The two Coco eggs are diverging in degree of darkness in the yolk-ish area as time goes on, which makes me think something might be happening in the darkening one, although I'm not going to get my hopes up...and if there is something, I sure hope it's a GOOD something and not that I need to be sniff testing to avoid a nasty disaster...that's always been my fear of doing things in an incubator vs with a broody.

I got a dozen eggs last year from a breeder, and 7 hatched, most in the incubator though a couple actually hatched under a broody. I moved the hatched chicks under Rahab in the evening, and in the morning she was proud as could be with her chicks! .Tamar hatched one, and was happy with the second one that I snuck under her.

One of the chicks failed to thrive but of the remaining 6 I had a 50/50 sex ratio. I kept one boy (Silas) and the girls, sent two boys to auction (not worried, too small for anything but soup!) and am pleased with the experience. I'd do it again.