INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[Chaneys Ranch]

ANYWAY, I don't know if either of these pictures is good enough to tell, but can anyone confirm or deny whether this egg is fertile?

I vote fertile!

Quote:
It will, we are gaining 2 minutes of daylight every day!

DD is stuck home with strep throat today, so she decided to start training her chicken. Both did very well. In about 8min, "Bubbles" learned to consistently peck at the red target chip & not peck at the distraction white chip. She surpassed "Cuddles" on her 1st attempt, so it looks like Bubbles will be an excellent candidate for DD's project.

Hope she feels better, good job on chicken training!

Quote: Thats very kind to offer! And I am glad you've chosen to be part of our thread

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

Hey guys, since chick season is almost upon us, shout out if you saw chicks at the feed store! It really helps others plan for new layers or just flock additions. This will probably be the first year I won't need to buy chicks! If I find Royal Purple guinea fowl I may have to buy them though LOL!

 

[kittydoc]

@Indyshent just a thought about your less than great hatch...that's the kind of thing that was happening to me in my early hatches last year. I d id some research and found that even if the eggs are technically viable, if they are collected during really cold weather, they are much more likely to have lower hatchability and greater deformities/deaths. That's why I have yet to put an egg in the incubator this year (though if I'd had my act together, I could have during the past few warm days). So unless your hens are in a warmer place (like a very protected garage) or you collect eggs very frequently (preferably while they are still hot off the presses and feel warm), I don't think it's worth incubating them to just wind up disappointed and bummed. I personally felt like I made chicks suffer (even though I didn't do it on purpose, obviously). Everybody wants chicks asap, and you can do that in mild weather, but not during bitter spells. I hope to be ready to start setting eggs in my bators after this next cold snap, if temps will stay above freezing most of the day and/or if I feel like running outside to the coop every hour or so so the eggs don't chill too much.

My later season hatches with the same birds went MUCH better and I did not change anything else, so I do think chilling of the eggs has adverse effects even if they survive to hatch. They want to be warm.

ALSO, I would encourage those of you who raise a lot of chicks to put your breeding hens on vitamin-enriched water. It's cheap insurance against a lot of hatch defects. I need to start that asap now that I just reminded myself again. About 2 weeks head start is recommended, though with water-soluble vitamins, I would think a week would be sufficient. You can't really OD the birds on B vitamins (of which there are MANY that can cause defects if low) or vitamin C, though that's not a big issue for birds. Excesses of those just pass into the urine. You CAN overdo fat-soluble vitamins like D and K, so if your vitamin supplement for the waterers includes both, follow the directions very accurately. Vitamin E is about the only fat-soluble vitamin that is hard to overdose.

@jchny2000 sorry to hear about DD's grandmother, glad to hear about your brother!

@pipdzipdnreadytogo Egg(s) is/are fertile. Great photos. Bullseyes are fertile. Smaller solid whitish yellow spots are infertile. If anyone ever wants to check an infertile one, just grab an egg from a hen without access to a roo or buy a dozen at the store.

 

[raisinemright]

Hey guys, since chick season is almost upon us, shout out if you saw chicks at the feed store! It really helps others plan for new layers or just flock additions. This will probably be the first year I won't need to buy chicks! If I find Royal Purple guinea fowl I may have to buy them though LOL!

I just bought 22 chicks cuckoo Marans, light brahma's, and Sussex. And then 10 hatching eggs cuckoo Marans and favaroll large fowl. Yesterday from a wonderful husband and wife from the Hicksville area. Great people and had a lot of chicks hatching. She does ship eggs also.

 

[kittydoc]

We had out best hatchery experience with Ideal. It was cold as the dickens during the whole delivery window, but all the chicks were fine. I paid extra for more insulation (little hay pack), insurance, and NO live packing peanuts. I cull enough cockerels and would rather pay MORE to have no boys. We ordered BO's and SLW's from them I think. The SLW's stopped laying when they were just 3. We still have BO's from them that are five years old and some still laying, including my beloved Sweetie who likes to be carried around like a puppy. They were hatchery quality, but easy to handle, and a few were really lovey dovey like Sweetie. I think we are going to order some Australorps from them since the ones at TSC are generally straight run. Our Australorps and BO's make up most of our mixed layer flock, plus a few one-offs (a light Brahma and a wheaten Ameracauna) and a few Orp females that I kept for breeding but didn't like well enough to breed when they were maturing.

Just FYI, Mount Healthy is NOT a good place to buy from. They have had lots of health issues with their chicks over the last several years (most years, but not all). TSC buys from them, so I consider us lucky to have purchased from TSC during one of their "good years."

I can't remember who else we bought from, but they are a "conglomerate" that puts orders together from a lot of individual breeders. That went OK except one extra chick broke its femur, and I couldn't fix it. That was a bummer.

 

[ellymayRans]

Ive ordered from My Pet Chicken multiple times over the years and the chicks were great laying and fertile even up thru their 5th year... i did have 1 order with losses but their customer service was great and so very sweet. I recently went in with some fellow BYCers on a sand hill order but yet to be able to report on them, as well as chicks from Whitmore Farms.

Yes i cracked on chicks this year!! I haven't bought any for years besides a few from RK here and there for d'uccles and easter eggers.

So spring time i have Salmon Faverolles, Russian Orlaf; blue, black and splash Marans and AM's.
I think that will be about 38 chicks!! Lol! Focusing on peas, ducks and turkey hatching this year.

I mean I will hatch..i know i won't be able to resist but...just not going to stress over it.

Joining this years Easter hatch a long again...so fun!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Welp, I've pounded my head against that lab report enough for one day. I would have worked on it over the weekend, you know, when I actually had time, but our lovely lab instructor didn't post the data (without which we cannot write probably 90% of the report) until 9 pm on the Sunday of the last weekend before the thing was due. Gotta love them responsible instructors.

I'm betting yes.

I vote fertile!

@pipdzipdnreadytogo
 Egg(s) is/are fertile.  Great photos.  Bullseyes are fertile.  Smaller solid whitish yellow spots are infertile.  If anyone ever wants to check an infertile one, just grab an egg from a hen without access to a roo or buy a dozen at the store.

Ohmygoodness, y'all know what that means?! Baby Reublets are coming soon!! e

Also, thanks, Kittydoc, for the info. I do know the bullseye versus blotch thing, but I wasn't sure if that was an actual bullseye or an odd blotch. Also nice to know about the temperature thing, I'll keep that in mind when setting back eggs.

 

[Faraday40]

I haven't heard much about Cackle hatchery. I think Farm & Fleet orders their from Cackle. Has anyone gotten good/ bad chicks from there?

 

[Indyshent]

Chick doesn't have splayed leg. One foot looks almost folded, both hock joints are tremendously swollen this afternoon and scabby. I think it's been beating the joints on the cage bottom trying to move around (it's a plastic dog crate with dense wood chips that the birds keep moving). It won't eat at all.

I'm going to have to move the broody Wellie out of the crate though because she won't stop teaching them "to scratch" (translation: kick all of the wood chips into huge piles... on the waterer and food dishes... so the babies can never find anything to eat or drink).

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Indyshent, I know this is kind of in backwards order from what you described, but rather eerily similar:

Perosis is first characterized by pinpoint hemorrhages and a slight puffiness about the hock joint, followed by an apparent flattening of the tibiometatarsal joint caused by a rotation of the metatarsus. The metatarsus continues to twist and may become bent or bowed so that it is out of alignment with the tibia. When this condition exists, the leg cannot adequately support the weight of the bird. The articular cartilage is displaced, and the Achilles tendon slips from its condyles. Perosis is not a specific deficiency sign; it appears with several nutrient deficiencies.

From this page: http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/p..._poultry/vitamin_deficiencies_in_poultry.html Choline, Folic Acid, and Biotin deficiencies are listed with Perosis as a possible symptom (And Vitamin B6, but that is listed as a symptom of chronic deficiency, so possibly less likely in this case).

Also, under Niacin Deficiency:

Deficiency produces enlargement of the tibiotarsal joint, valgus-varus bowing of the legs, poor feathering, and dermatitis on the head and feet.

Just something to try out. I hope you can figure something out for it.



And yeah, whether mom teaches them to or not, babies just love kicking bedding into their waterers. It's like they aim specifically for them. Chickens.



Edited to fix wording