Kaliko
Hatching
Good afternoon, all! ^_^
I'm really happy to have found this community, and even though I haven't posted yet, I've gotten a ton of lifesaving advice from various threads already.
I'm (almost!) a Coturnix quail-raiser - I have 6 eggs in my incubator that pipped today - hopefully more will follow in the next couple days. I don't have enough dog-free room in my yard for chickens, but my mom is moving to San Antonio in a couple months, and she's very excited to get chickens, being a born-and-raised farm girl, so I'm learning as much about them as I can for her as well.
I bought 2 dozen eggs off eBay last month, and received them (plus a few extras) on 30 Mar. When I candled them around day 10, 9 were not developing, and another had a clear blood ring. [I cracked them all to verify... that's a pretty low fertility rate, isn't it?] Anyway, since then, the rest of them look to have been developing nicely, and right up until I locked them down on the 14th, most of them still had clearly visible veins and beautiful fluttering embryos. I've never had kids (and probably won't), so candling is about as close to a sonogram as I'm likely to ever see, and I'm just overwhelmed by the miracle of seeing these tiny creatures develop in these little portable uteruses. ^_^
My new husband's 3 sons are staying with us this weekend, so I'm really hoping that at least one of these chicks emerges before we have to take them home, so they can see them as newborns. We only get them every couple weeks at best, and they're all teenagers, so it's rare that we get all three at once - one or 2 of them are almost always doing something with friends, and decide to skip. But they're all sweet at heart, and they all love animals, so I think they'll really enjoy seeing these babies grow up!
I've got some pretty cool photos of the pips, and I hope to get many more of the hatchings.. if any are particularly clear or unusual-looking, I'll post them, but I don't want to bore y'all too much. I'm also not at all confident about the prospects of at least 4 or 5 of the remaining eggs, so if I do eggtopsies, I'll surely be asking for feedback on them. Thank you so much for the information you've provided and the support I've experienced just from browsing the forum.
Cheers!
- Kaliko
I'm really happy to have found this community, and even though I haven't posted yet, I've gotten a ton of lifesaving advice from various threads already.
I'm (almost!) a Coturnix quail-raiser - I have 6 eggs in my incubator that pipped today - hopefully more will follow in the next couple days. I don't have enough dog-free room in my yard for chickens, but my mom is moving to San Antonio in a couple months, and she's very excited to get chickens, being a born-and-raised farm girl, so I'm learning as much about them as I can for her as well.
I bought 2 dozen eggs off eBay last month, and received them (plus a few extras) on 30 Mar. When I candled them around day 10, 9 were not developing, and another had a clear blood ring. [I cracked them all to verify... that's a pretty low fertility rate, isn't it?] Anyway, since then, the rest of them look to have been developing nicely, and right up until I locked them down on the 14th, most of them still had clearly visible veins and beautiful fluttering embryos. I've never had kids (and probably won't), so candling is about as close to a sonogram as I'm likely to ever see, and I'm just overwhelmed by the miracle of seeing these tiny creatures develop in these little portable uteruses. ^_^
My new husband's 3 sons are staying with us this weekend, so I'm really hoping that at least one of these chicks emerges before we have to take them home, so they can see them as newborns. We only get them every couple weeks at best, and they're all teenagers, so it's rare that we get all three at once - one or 2 of them are almost always doing something with friends, and decide to skip. But they're all sweet at heart, and they all love animals, so I think they'll really enjoy seeing these babies grow up!
I've got some pretty cool photos of the pips, and I hope to get many more of the hatchings.. if any are particularly clear or unusual-looking, I'll post them, but I don't want to bore y'all too much. I'm also not at all confident about the prospects of at least 4 or 5 of the remaining eggs, so if I do eggtopsies, I'll surely be asking for feedback on them. Thank you so much for the information you've provided and the support I've experienced just from browsing the forum.
Cheers!
- Kaliko
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