Illinois...

[Faraday40]

Hatch cockerels from Oreo and Double Stuffed, pick the best and breed them with their aunt - Oreo's son with Double Stuff and Double Stuffed's son with Oreo. I would imagine you could get some sizable and lovely laced birds to move forward with.

Puppy also came from Blizzard. His lacing is not very good, but he could be bred to Oreo who looks great. He has decent size & it might save me a generation. (That's another one of the reasons I kept him around.) It will be a while though. It took Mr Wonderful about a year to effectively fertilize the hens - even thought I knew he started mating them around 6 months. Puppy is crowing but I haven't seen him even try to mate yet.

When the time comes, I'll have to separate the orps into breeding groups. This can sometimes get tricky, because hens who are BFFs can stop laying when separated. (Or worse - sit outside the chicken tractor as "hawk bait" to be near their friend. I'm pretty sure that would be the case with Oreo & Double Stuff.

I love to go on & on about the chickens.
.....BUT our real puppy, Kepler, decided to play in the mud. UGH! Lots of mud! (He's normally all one color.) His playtime was followed by a bath.

It figures he'd do something like this. I cleaned the house & did a thorough job on all the floors. I had planned to catch up on laundry & errands today, but cleaning up after Kepler took up my afternoon.

 

[sharkerbaby]

Haha, he definitely had a fabulous time and looks quite pleased with himself!

 

[Faraday40]

did you have Seramas?

View attachment 1635866

Cool. Yes, we have 2 pet seramas. Never tried showing chickens.

Teddy is a silkied serama rooster. He's kind of rare. Noodle is a serama female. Neither one is especially tiny, but I've learned that the size A seramas are very difficult to breed/hatch. Ours are basically spoiled pets. (They spend more time inside the house than outside in their little heated coop.)

 

[Melopsittacus]

Hi Everyone! It's been suggested I repost here. I have a Japanese Quail but unfortunately I can't keep her. I'm hoping to find her a good home. Let me know if you are interested. Thanks!

I found this little quail at a park last week. My dog scared her out of the grass and she flew into a fence trying to get away. At first, I thought she was injured, because she tried to fly away a few more times but she kept falling to the ground. I brought her home and put her in an old hamster cage. After some observation, it seems like she is not injured and probably was just stunned from the collision. She’s been eating parakeet food, preening, hanging out - the usual bird stuff. I put up an ad on Craigslist to see if anyone is looking for her, but no luck. She's a very sweet bird. She's tame enough to allow handling but she doesn’t like it too much. Unfortunately, I can't keep her because she's not safe with my dogs being around. I don't have a yard to build a coop and run for her. It wouldn't be fair to her to have to spend the rest of her life in a cage just to keep her safe from the dogs. I’d like to find her a home with other quail and someone knowledgeable in how to take care of quail. I just want her to have the good life. If you think you could give her a new home, please message me. Thank you!

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...-new-home-chicago-area.1286990/#post-20835597

 

[BReeder!]

Hi Everyone! It's been suggested I repost here. I have a Japanese Quail but unfortunately I can't keep her. I'm hoping to find her a good home. Let me know if you are interested. Thanks!



https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...-new-home-chicago-area.1286990/#post-20835597

@Melopsittacus Where are you located? I could take her as I am hatching more quail right now to raise as well and I have a cage set up. I am in Plainfield, IL.

Welcome to the Illinois thread! Hope you stick around.

 

[Faraday40]

@BReeder!
About how many quail eggs are developing? (How many were set?)

 

[BReeder!]

@BReeder!
About how many quail eggs are developing? (How many were set?)

I set 103. All 103 are still in there. I was not able to candle every single one. It proved difficult to candle. I did get several with veins and two pulsing heart beats evens. I only candled about 30 of them. I would say at least 20 of the 30 were fertile and developing on day 5. I will candle EVERY egg just before lockdown. Any that are totally clear will get thrown out. I learned a technique with color too - quail eggs that glow green when candled are fertile and yellow are not. It's still hard though on the dark eggs to tell. I am hoping for at least 50 quail to hatch and be healthy. We will have to wait and see. Today at 11 PM is twelve days. Only 7 more days to go. I will be going into lockdown Sunday night, so I'll candle again Sunday evening. I wanted to buy a candler but haven't yet. I used my cell phone flashlight the first time with OK results - I mean I aw heartbeats... not bad for a cell phone. I will either get a candler shipped through Amazon quickly or just use a bright flashlight. I know I have some bright LED flashlights laying around. I also have a projector - It's 2500 lumens I think. I'm sure I could put a blank white image on the projector and turn it into a candler with some cardboard and duct tape... that would be interesting.

 

[Faraday40]

I only do a quick candling around 2 weeks in order to toss the obvious clears. Basically I use a mini LED flashlight. (Cheap but bright kind. Since most of mine still are too big, I just use aluminum foil to block the light & a pencil to poke a perfect sized hole in the foil. I then press it against the egg and look for the shadow. If it glows brightly = toss.

I candle at night with the lights off, so it's very dark. (It's OK... the flashlight will help find the way to the incubator.) I remove the lid & touch the light to each egg & the lack of shadow can be seen in less than second. No need to remove & handle each egg for candling. Leave them in the turner. It may be fun to look a few very closely, but it wastes a lot of time. Just quickly pull out the brightly glowing ones and move on. If in doubt, mark the egg & leave it. For several years (back when I was teaching & before kids & chickens) I used to leave all the eggs in the incubator. I learned the hard way that bacteria filled eggs can explode & contaminate the entire incubator. It happened on day 19 and killed 8 potential chicks. I had to quickly rinse out the incubator & plug it back in. Only 4 chicks made it out of 18 eggs.

When it comes time to lock-down and increase the humidity, be sure to do it at a time when you'll be home. I tend to get temp changes when the humidity changes. Brief changes in temps are OK, but it would be terrible to kill your eggs so close to the hatch.

 

[Molpet]

I turned down the temp when I raised the humidity

 

[BReeder!]

I only do a quick candling around 2 weeks in order to toss the obvious clears. Basically I use a mini LED flashlight. (Cheap but bright kind. Since most of mine still are too big, I just use aluminum foil to block the light & a pencil to poke a perfect sized hole in the foil. I then press it against the egg and look for the shadow. If it glows brightly = toss.

I candle at night with the lights off, so it's very dark. (It's OK... the flashlight will help find the way to the incubator.) I remove the lid & touch the light to each egg & the lack of shadow can be seen in less than second. No need to remove & handle each egg for candling. Leave them in the turner. It may be fun to look a few very closely, but it wastes a lot of time. Just quickly pull out the brightly glowing ones and move on. If in doubt, mark the egg & leave it. For several years (back when I was teaching & before kids & chickens) I used to leave all the eggs in the incubator. I learned the hard way that bacteria filled eggs can explode & contaminate the entire incubator. It happened on day 19 and killed 8 potential chicks. I had to quickly rinse out the incubator & plug it back in. Only 4 chicks made it out of 18 eggs.

When it comes time to lock-down and increase the humidity, be sure to do it at a time when you'll be home. I tend to get temp changes when the humidity changes. Brief changes in temps are OK, but it would be terrible to kill your eggs so close to the hatch.

I like the idea of candling in the turner trays. I'm going to give that a try. It takes time ot candle 103 eggs. I will probably do 1 or 2 trays and then stop to let the incubator temp and humidity come back up, then go back to it, repeat until done. There's 6 trays in the incubator with twenty egg slots each - obviously not all are filled, but most of them are.