INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[Faraday40]

@pipdzipdnreadytogo
Congrats on the cuties!

Could you please post some pics of your incubator & partitioning? I'm curious. I'm guessing it's to keep track of which chick hatched from which egg - since they move around a lot during hatch time.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I can get pictures of it after everyone's out. The last egg pipped this morning, so hopefully it won't be long!!

I partitioned them mostly because I didn't want to obtain some gray hairs watching the first to hatch play football with the rest of the eggs, haha! But I guess I did kind of want to know who was who because I marked each with a symbol to keep track of their weights individually. I didn't have a hygrometer, so I was using percent weight loss of each egg to determine whether the humidity in there was okay.

The partitions are just scraps of hardware cloth that I cleaned with hot water and soap, and then zip tied together. I made it too tall at first for my incubator (which is a Brinsea Octagon 20), but when I trimmed it down and cut the corners for the curve of the top of the incubator, I made it too short in some spots and one of the chickies kept putting its face right up next to the cut edge. Talk about giving me gray hairs! I'm either going to scrap it or put something on those sharp edges if I use it again. I've only used it since lockdown; before that, I used the rails that came with the incubator along with hair ties to keep the eggs standing with the pointed ends down.



ETA: Oh yeah, and chickie number 4 hatched an hour or two ago! This one is reddish like the light colored one I posted earlier.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Finally decided to take the good camera up for pictures. It won't take pictures through the window on the incubator, but here are the two dry babies in the brooder.

(His/her head was flat from pressing up against the EcoGlow )

Look how tiny they are I can't stand it!!

Edited to add a parenthesis...

 

[ellymayRans]

Driving me crazy Pipd! I haven't hatched for about a month now and I'm so ancy to start again I have separated my Mille Fleur Cochins in hopes to get them laying! I had brought in all my Silkie hens when the frigid rains then freezing started and 5 of the 7 are now laying. A frizzled cross and sizzle. My MFC gals are 9 months and never laid that I'm aware of so hoping to jump start them!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Oh, they are so beautiful! I hope you can start hatching from them soon!



The last egg hatched just a few minutes ago!! 5 out of 5! I did better than my broody hen for hatch rate! So I have the one really dark chick, 2 that look almost like Welsummer chicks but with no distinct chipmunk stripes, and 2 that are actually red like their parents. Aren't genetics neat?

 

[Faraday40]

Those chicks are so cute!!!!!

I think I'm going broody. It's in the single digits outside & I'm actually longing for chicks!

Thankfully, I locked up my incubator.

 

[ellymayRans]

I do love hatching!!

My hatching goals this year:
Pairing my new Black and Blue Copper Marans Roos to my old gals as I lost my good Marans Roos this summer.
AMs (cuckoo, lavender cuckoo and blue)
Mille Fleur Cochins
Silkies
Turkeys

(Bourbon Reds, Narragansett and on the search for a Midget White Hen for my Tom)
India Blue Peafowl
Muscovy (Blue Fawns and Chocolates)

Starting over to add:
Russian Orlaf (sp?)
Salmon Faverolles

They are the only 2 breeds I care to add to my flock. I only ended up with a RO pullet out of my bunch from the sand hill order. Very disappointing is an understatement!

If there's any interest I do have Muscovys for sale. I have had a slew of gals hatched from the summer and all but 3 are fully feathered enough to be outside. They are all black Pied or barred. Of course a few males as well but only a few. PM me if you do.

I'm sure I will hatch a few of the other breeds in hopes to add more sizzles, olive eggers and good hardy layers.

 

[tmarsh83]

Hey all,

I've been out of the loop for a while, hope all is well with everyone.

I've been doing some freelance writing this year, and have an article that I'm doing for a Trapping and Predator Hunting magazine that I wanted to tie into chickens. With chickens being such a draw for furbearers, my angle is for trappers to network with local chicken owners to trap their area (live or footfold, but likely live trap) to reduce pressure on the chickens. I asked mods about letting me start a thread asking for feedback, or experience, and they shut me down. I think they thought I was actually trying to set up the network of trappers with chicken owners, I just wanted to get the opinions of the community of backyard flock owners as to why or why not they would allow someone to come in and trap near their chickens.

They did say I could ask about it on my state thread, so here I am.

Would you allow someone to trap on your property near your chickens?

Why or why not?

Have you had losses due to predators?

Also, if any of you have pictures of predator impacts that you would be willing to share for the article, I would be very grateful.

If you have questions about what I'm trying to get at, also, don't hesitate to contact me here or PM.

Thanks all, and Happy New Year.

Anyone else have any feedback or images they can contribute?

 

[JanetMarie]

Commenting on inviting a trapper on your property:

No, I would not allow someone else to trap on my property. One reason is the traps need to be checked daily, and for me I would rather the traps be checked two or three times a day. I would just do the trapping myself.

Last summer when we had the fox problem we had purchased some soft-hold leg traps, with intentions of using this winter. That hasn't happened, and probably won't. We've made their area so a fox just can't dash in and grab someone.

We've had the most losses from foxes. A few from hawks and falcons, and two in one night from an owl. Their area was very secure, and stupidly let them sleep outside in the spruce trees, and trying to fish them out of there was extremely difficult/impossible. But after the owl attack the low branches were cut so they couldn't easily perch there anymore.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Here are the babies, all dried out and in the brooder! They're so stinkin' cute!!

They're enjoying the EcoGlow, too!

"Hey, are you trying to sleep?"

I took pictures of their chick down, too, so that I can keep track of who looks like what later on. It's kind of exciting to see how they'll feather out! Especially since I was expecting them all to be red like their parents! In order of hatch:

Editing to add, I nearly forgot the pictures of the incubator and partitions as requested! Sorry about the mess, I haven't cleaned the incubator yet. I had 5 eggs, so I just divided the incubator evenly into 6 spaces. The sixth slot worked out so that I could put my heat sinks in it. I put warm water in little zipper baggies to help stabilize the temp in the incubator since there were so few eggs in it.

The divider itself. It was just kind of slapped together so it's pretty rough.

A couple close ups of the zip ties. I ran my finger over all these edges to make sure none were too sharp for the babies before I used it. I hope this is what you wanted to see?