Hatch-Along - Setting eggs this weekend (Jan5/6) WHOS WITH ME!

[monkeywoman1953]

The chicks are SO cute ! How / where do I buy / breed some Olive Eggers ?

 

[SilkieSensation]

just thought I'd share a few pics of our sweet chickies from this weekend...and for future reference, how do I calculate "hatch rate"? Is that simply the percentage of live hatchers out of the viable chicks going into lockdown? or percentage of live hatchers out of viable chicks from the beginning, including culls along the way? (I'm assuming it does NOT include infertiles culled throughout incubation) We started with 40 eggs, culled 16 over the first 10 days that were, in fact, infertile. Left us with 24 fertile eggs, went into lockdown with 18 looking great, and 6 looking long-time dead, but set them anyway, just in case. As I expected, the 6 never hatched (on later inspection, all six had died very early, they looked like first week deaths, and two were within days of setting, given their small size), but all 18 that were good at lockdown hatched.

part of the crew...


the one center-left, white with pink and silver stripe (and feathered legs!) was our first hatcher...



the "red-head" most in focus, with stripe down back, is the chick whose egg we accidentally cracked back at day 10 or so of incubation...lovingly christened "candle" at this point thank you for the melted birthday candle advice!



given the behavior of this chick now, I'll be surprised if it's not a roo...growing really fast, much bigger than the others, and VERY dominant!


we have three that look like this one, and they have feathered legs, too! (the tiny one in the foreground, not the green jammies in the background there's only one that looks like her)


we have three or four of these little yellow chicks with black polka dots on them, and feathered legs...then some other little yellows without spots or feathers on the legs...and one that's kind of blue-gray


I'm so intrigued to see what these birds all look like! I'm going to call the breeder tomorrow and ask what all she had in that coop, so I can at least narrow my pool of guesses as to heritage! what might feathered legs be? that surprised me!

Feathered legs could be: Cochin, Brahma, Silkie, d'Uccle, French Marans, Faverolle, Sultan (there are more I can't remember off the top of my head)

The chicks are SO cute ! How / where do I buy / breed some Olive Eggers ?

Olive Eggers are made by crossing a blue egger with a brown egger. The darker the brown the darker the olive coloring. Crossing an Ameraucana with a French Black Copper Marans would produce a nice dark olive egg. Crossing an Ameraucana with a RIR would produce a light olive or dark green.

 

[chicken pickin]

I do! I'm going to save up about 30 eggs this time from our little flock this time and hatch more. It was so much fun! Our 13 chickies are still doing great! Day two has passed with no incidences except that we lost a little duckling

I'm thinking it choked on it's food because they ran out of water last night. So today I made a little gallon waterer myself to prevent them from running out again. I feel guilty. So we're at 15 ducklings that we had shipped in and 13 chicks. Are you setting again?

Yes we are also setting eggs again. I am picking up CCL eggs local on Fri So I will set eggs again this weekend. Hopefully this time goes better for me.

 

[CaudeteSpain]

Made my incubater out of a picnic cooler box, just set 10 of my own chickens eggs today. This is my first attempt at hatching my own chicken eggs. My geese and ducks have just stated mating but they are happy to sit on their own nests.

 

[Outrun Acres]

ok that sounds very logical, & I've been told to calibrate my hydrometer b/c it maybe off by 5% or more which could make the diff.

I'm just feeling bad b/c this is my 2nd nightmare bad hatch & I thought I was doing better this time, and when I opened the eggs 2 of them looked like they should pop out and start chirping,
I mean one had its beak right there, touching the membrane to internal pip, but it never did ... I know this takes some learning, but wow I didn't expect to feel like I'm just killing one bator full after another , that is no good at all!

I'm going to try using the borrowed Little Giant 30 egg, I'm not sure if I should even get my hopes up,
but I really wanted to hatch out a nice laying flock and 3 live chicks from 6 sleepless weeks of constant bator checking have me at my wits end w/ the diy bator.

I am thankful for all the help and ideas ! I can't imagine how I'd feel if I was completely alone w/o BYC trying to figure this out...

It seems to me like so many things have to come together just right for a healthy chick to hatch. From eggs being shipped, storing them correctly before incubating, and then the whole incubating process. Even if you have done everything right sometime the chick just has trouble in the end for reasons unknown. There is a reason why chickens reproduce so often and in such prolific numbers. I think it's natures way of overcoming such a fragile process.

This was our first time incubating and we used a still air lg with a turner. Granted we were using eggs gathered from our own flock, so I knew exactly how they were stored and for how long. We too did a dry hatch, but the humidity in our incubator remained on average at 40%. At lockdown we managed to raise it to 60%. When chicks started hatching humidity automatically increased to over 75%. So if I had the humidity higher than 60 I think some chicks could have drowned when they started hatching. The main thing I tried to keep in my head was that oxygen is more important than humidity. So throughout the entire hatch I kept both plugs open.

My chicks hatched over a period of two and a half days. I think they may have been a bit staggered because of the hot and cold spots in the LG. I did have to babysit it a lot but we still managed to hatch 13 chicks out of 16 eggs. I think you will enjoy the LG. I know people have horror stories about using these incubators, but my families experience proved to be on the opposite end of that spectrum, quite wonderful. I know what you mean about BYC members. Without all of their experience and useful information I don't think we would have had a very successful hatch. I hope this thread stays open we are going to start gathering eggs and try again. It has been so much fun bounceing ideas off of everyone at times when we were all going through the same thing. Well good luck with the LG and happy hatching!

 

[Outrun Acres]

Is anyone else planning to set a new batch of eggs?

Yes! We are going to start gathering today and will probably set them on monday or tuesday!

 

[Outrun Acres]

Olive eggers usually have the puffy Ameraucana cheeks & pea combs & often have green legs. Chick 1 looks pretty likely, not quite as sure about chick 2.
I have more eggs shipping Monday & am picking some up locally Tuesday & Wednesday. Looks like I'll be setting more around Thursday.

Sounds like a few of us will be starting more eggs next week. Should we start a new thread or continue on with this one?

 

[dblea202]

So today is officially day 25 for our maran eggs...nothing. so tonight we will candle one last time and I read. On another thread to use a stethoscope on eggs hard to candle and you could hear the heartbeat so thats what we are going to do. If no signs of life we will be doing some eggtopsies to see what happened.

On a good note though we have four eggs that go into lockdown tonight!!! Woohooo these eggs have gone so fast I can't believe we are at lockdown already! We think the are two golden lakenvelders one BLRW and possibly aa welsummer or barred rock.. so we can't wait to see what hatches...so far candling these guys have been really good so we candle one last time and hope for good results! We will probably try the stethoscope on these ones too!

We also have another dozen coming to us next week!!

 

[Aschenfire]

Sounds like a few of us will be starting more eggs next week. Should we start a new thread or continue on with this one?

There is a February hatch thread going...I see familiar faces over there already

 

[FeyRaine]

So today is officially day 25 for our maran eggs...nothing. so tonight we will candle one last time and I read. On another thread to use a stethoscope on eggs hard to candle and you could hear the heartbeat so thats what we are going to do. If no signs of life we will be doing some eggtopsies to see what happened.

On a good note though we have four eggs that go into lockdown tonight!!! Woohooo these eggs have gone so fast I can't believe we are at lockdown already! We think the are two golden lakenvelders one BLRW and possibly aa welsummer or barred rock.. so we can't wait to see what hatches...so far candling these guys have been really good so we candle one last time and hope for good results! We will probably try the stethoscope on these ones too!

We also have another dozen coming to us next week!!

dblea -I'm so sorry you don't have marans popping out! I've had such a hard time w/ them these 2 hatches, and I'm not certain if I'm just paying more attention to them on the threads but is appears to me other ppl are having worse luck w/ hatch rates on maran eggs. The 2 which DID hatch for me last time are 3 wks yesterday and they are HUGE fully feathered active amazing birds so I'm kinda torn b/c the Marans which hatched are so far the best growing birds I've ever had which causes me to want to try again, but 2 out of 22 on maran eggs last hatch was depressing so I'm looking to find something _other than_ maran (& other than Ame.) to fill up the loaned 30 egg LG for my 3rd try. Maybe after I manage a good hatch of something more "normal chicken" I'll try Marans again. But right now, I just would like something easier, something I can have a happy time hatching.

I hope your 4 in lockdown all hatch perfectly! It will be interesting , were they in the bator w/ the failed maran eggs? if so & they do hatch then it points to marans being extra hard to incubate...