Handled With Care Farm and Rabbitry's First Hatch-A-Long!

[CYGChickies]

Wow I have always wanted bantam Australorps! There isn't a single breeder anywhere near me I always see stuff of people having them in California. We hatch a lot of partridge silkies and that's what our first chick in the broody's batch was. The colors we have in adults are a trio of white, a trio of partridge and the other trio is BBS, a splash roo over two black hens.
We managed to wait it out on the quail and we will be looking this afternoon to get an official hatch count and also move the chicken eggs to the hatch tray.

 

[rachmickmurphy]

the australorps were purchased at auction by someone who thought that he was bidding on standards he was happy. i was incubating eggs when he told me his story i offered $10 more than he paid he said i could have them and their eggs that were in my bator i got the trio and 3 chicks the best $30 i spent. i have silkies not SQ but they good examples of the breed. are yours vaulted some of mine are they dont have great hatchrate but i put some their eggs in every batch so we do have a few i think there 15silkies thats chicks too thought

this is nugget hes did live by our fire until he started to crow hubby wasnt too happy and he had to move out to the shed he used to sleep on my lap like a cat while i watched tv he dont stay still now he bigger and he has a girlfriend so he just struts around showing off to her lol

 

[CYGChickies]

I am pretty proud of my silkies this year as my white roo got some very nice compliments from the judge. I am growing up a pullet that shows a ton of show promise. Mine almost all vault. My splash roo is my only non-vaulted adult and even he seems to throw them sporadically.
That is super lucky about the bantam Australorps! I got my pair of modern game bantams kind of the same way, paid $20 for the adult pair and they're just gorgeous. If you ever decide to ship/sell some bantam Aus eggs I'd take some for sure!

ETA: We just love our silkies for the personality too! My partridge hen Jade has a diaper on a leash and she goes to the market with us sometimes. She's very human oriented.

 

[CYGChickies]

We have babies! We ended up with nine quail chicks so far and--surprise!--six Easter Egger chicks! They hatched in the turner, go figure! Our birds hatch on the "stop turning day" all the time; I don't know why we don't suspect it

Picture time!

Don't mind the blurry pics, quail chicks do NOT like to sit still!

 

[rachmickmurphy]

Ooooh love them. They are awesome. those quails are tiny beside the ee. Wow congrads those ee so cute they all look slightly different in colouring you will be able to tell who is who.

 

[CYGChickies]

Aren't they great! EE chicks are like confetti, so many colors! The quail are in with the EE for tonight and they keep cuddling around one or two and it's so cute. Hopefully we will have some silkies in the next day or so. I think it's worth the tiny drop in temp and humidity to check once a day after having some hatch early.

 

[rachmickmurphy]

cant wait to see how your EEs feather out they going to be so colourful. i am not sure there are real EEs in australia we have araucanas i have a few and i know someone who has the rumpless variety. i used a partridge coloured araucana roo over isa browns this year i have two black female chicks in a grow pen hoping the egg shell colour will be olive its not something i have done before so only time will tell. Yes you got that right bout checking. hatching in the turner is a concern when are they orientating at day 16 my silkies hatch day 20 sometimes but none hatch that early i always put silkie eggs in for the reason that they out first and call everyone else out maybe i should use quail. good luck with the silkies hope they all hatch out successfully.

 

[CYGChickies]

So far we have five more Easter Eggers and our silkies are being shy, none out yet! That's not surprising since I have two people waiting for silkies and none for EE. That's usually how it goes Now I just have to give the eggs a chance to hatch and clean everything else out before next week when the guinea eggs hatch. I'm going to be setting Australorps and my one Modern Game Bantam egg next.

 

[rachmickmurphy]

so thats 11 EEs now? great result with them too you have your process working a treat. it puzzles me how alot of members have dramas and issues. i read about alot of exploded eggs humidity issues and hatching deaths. i was so interested in your pics i missed the previous post sorry about that. eggs can be organised not sure what the import laws there are. we have a import ban here exporting is fine. i will pm some pen pics. its the last day of school holidays here tomorrow my kids cant wait to go back lol neither can i. nothing seems to get done when they home they want to cook paint and do their stuff-i tried to convince them paint the chook runs didnt happen tho.

 

[CYGChickies]

I'll check on the laws I'm thinking they might be strict and I don't know how chick eggs would do on a trip like that but I'll research. We candle our eggs about a week before hatch at the latest, 2 weeks in at the earliest and we throw out undeveloped eggs. That helps keep explosions to a minimum.
The humidity in missouri is great and we just keep an ice cream plastic tub full of water in the top and put wet sponges down in the hatching tray to ramp up humidity. There's always loss but I guess we may not talk about it as much. I am VERY pleased with this hatch and I think we have learned and the next incubation will be even better.
We are just waiting for the rest of the chickens and then next week it's guinea time! I'm going to add an updated pic with the other EEs including the one we found tonight! (One was being shy.)

ETA: It only took them about three hours to spread the food out like that too! We filled the bowl up and all the quail dogs in and started scratching it out again so I'm sure it'll be everywhere again by morning