I'm Probably Gonna Need My Hand Held Quail Hatch-A-Long

[Sefirothe]

Trying to keep track of hatching quail is impossible, they all hatch at once, use a separate incubator per batch if it is important, with 90+ eggs, good luck, I can’t manage a dozen! There are not breeds of quail, just colors and species (bobwhite, coturnix), you’ll be able to get a good idea on color by 3-4 weeks, all yellow chicks with a dot on their head will be your white birds. I’d candle your eggs and check air cells, they might be hard to see but if thy are mobile or wonky looking (or get more wonky looking as they grow), just in case you have shipping trauma, it is best to prepare your expectations now. My two shipped hatches this year had saddled air cells and dismal hatch rates, nothing you can do but hope for the best and prepare for the worst, but if air cells look good, yay! Day 4/5 is a good day to check fertility, a dark reddish black spot with the occasional vein or embryo is a good sign, a yellow/green egg with a faint yolk shadow is usually infertile. Day 10/11 is good for a recheck, veins appear in most eggs and all fertile eggs should be mostly dark. Make sure your turner works for quail eggs. Humidity isn’t a big issue until you hit lockdown. Have fun but remember they are addicting! Also be ready for 87 chicks, sometimes your hatch rates are ridiculously good too!

Thanks for the candling tip! Last night I was curious if I could see the air cell on any so I popped a couple out of the foam and tried them on the light on the brooder and also with a small led flashlight I have laying around.

I didn’t have much luck seeing definite air cells. It is hard with the mottled color of the shells.

I ordered a candling light from Amazon with a smaller tip meant for quail eggs and will try again when that comes in. I’ll try again to check each one with what I have before loading them in the incubator but not sure how successful I’ll be.

And I’m hoping to not have issues with the egg turner with them. We’ll see when I get it loaded later today.

 

[Sefirothe]

I don't have too much advice for you, but I'd love to name some of them!

Feel free to toss some names out!!

 

[BoundlessLove]

My first incubation, my first hatch-a-long, my first quail. So many firsts!!

I have 96 *gulp* eggs that arrived today from MyShire. I originally ordered 30 Jumbo White Coturnix and 30 Rare Colors Mix Coturnix. A couple days after I originally ordered I switched the rare colors mix to their feather sexable mix.

The eggs came today and are marked FS, R, E. So I'm thinking feather sexable, rare, and extras? So missing the Jumbo Whites? I sent an email to verify, still waiting on a response. But they shipped THIRTY SIX extra eggs!! Not a single one looks cracked or damaged. I haven't checked for hairline fractures yet. They are sitting and resting on my dining room table until tomorrow.

View attachment 4276135

The incubator has been running for about 4 hours now and seems to be around a degree off on temp and 10-15% off on humidity. It's also struggling to get over 100F per the hygrometer I have in it. Its currently set to 100.5 and the hygrometer I have inside hasn't gone over 99.3F. I'll probably bump it up to 101F in a bit and see how it goes.

So yea just muddling along over here. Even if the hatch rate is 50% at best, no way I can name all of these by myself, so I'm gonna need some name suggestions! Not even sure how exactly that works with a hatch-a-long? With this many eggs, I'm not sure if its possible to keep track of who is what. Of course I may be worrying about nothing and shipping/cold stress did the majority of them in.

HALP!!! Even if its just moral support, I'd appreciate it!

Wow! That is a lot of eggs and what an amazing first incubation experience. We are here to cheer!

 

[BoundlessLove]

When you can’t see through the eggs, go by the smell.
If you detect a rotten egg smell coming from the incubator, smell each egg individually and if one reeks - Toss it out before it explodes.

 

[GreenJay]

Here for moral support!!!
That's quite a pile of quail eggs ya got there! Good luck!

When you're ready to name, I'll take seven and name them after the Star Trek TOS crew
Live long and prosper tiny eggs!

 

[redinator]

Once the turner is taken out? No I dont. I read about doing baskets or bags for doing that. But considering the eggs are mixed colors anyway I dont see too much point.

You might want to get hatching bags. You can put the eggs in the bags at lockdown after you remove the turners. You'll be glad you did especially if you plan to raise them separately. https://a.co/d/1Qw0Fji Once they kick free of the shell you won't know which shell they came from.

 

[Sefirothe]

You might want to get hatching bags. You can put the eggs in the bags at lockdown after you remove the turners. You'll be glad you did especially if you plan to raise them separately. https://a.co/d/1Qw0Fji Once they kick free of the shell you won't know which shell they came from.

I was planning to keep the jumbo whites separate. I was going to try to maybe try to put a cardboard separator in for them to keep them to one side. But since they apparently didn’t ship…

All the rest are sold as mixed colors and no guarantee what is what. So they’ll just all go in the incubator together.

 

[redinator]

I was planning to keep the jumbo whites separate. I was going to try to maybe try to put a cardboard separator in for them to keep them to one side. But since they apparently didn’t ship…

All the rest are sold as mixed colors and no guarantee what is what. So they’ll just all go in the incubator together.

I know the feeling on waiting for shipments. I ordered eggs from 3 different sellers on Ebay. Each one stated they could take between 2-6 weeks to ship in the description. I contacted each seller to get a better idea of the time frame. One said their chickens are molting, another has a wait list of at least 10 other buyers, the 3rd said they'll be arriving "early next week".

 

[Sefirothe]

I gave up candling after the first couple. Very hard to see the air cell with the mottling on the shell. Or the eggs were scrambled and the air cell had gone walk about.

Plus using the incubator’s candling light, the room itself is too bright and no way to make it dimmer. Tried the led flashlight and it was hard to get good light transfer to the egg. So I started only doing visual checks for cracks.

I’ll try candling again in a few days when the light I ordered gets here.

#32 - hairline crack, not loaded
#78 - large crack, not loaded

And I doubled up numbers somewhere because I only got up to 95…oops.

I cracked open the cracked eggs and it looks like the boys are doing their job?

Everyone is loaded in and we are a go.

 

[Sefirothe]

And MyShire got back to me, they confirmed R is used for the rare colors mix but she only saw the feather sexable and jumbo whites on my order. They said to let them know what hatches.

I will say, the eggs marked E for extras I guess? They seemed to be mostly on the larger size consistently. I should have weighed them, ah hindsight lol.

And I already don’t like this style of egg turner. It might work ok for chicken eggs but quail eggs seem to roll every which way no matter how narrow or wide I set the rails in it.

I am keeping zero expectations about what will or won’t hatch at this point.