I hope everybody else is as happy as I am with this egg swap! I think the fact that no one knows what they are getting means no one is disappointed as long as they get something.
I would like to share my incubating saga with you all, I apologize if I get long-winded, but I am lonely and trying to stay out of the room with the incubators because there is a chick in there that "NEEDS" my help and I am not going to mess with it! (anymore) I think it will be fine, but it has had a rough time of it. I think my humidity dropped too low when it was hatching (maybe because I opened the lid to turn the egg so the chick wouldn't drown).
I have ordered so many eggs on
ebay in the last 3 months I have lost track. I know the total number of eggs set including
ebay, my own, and BYC eggs is more than 200. I have had 4 hatch, 1 didn't make it, so I gave its sibling away with 26 hatchery chicks I sold, 1 is struggling as I type and 1 happy tiny little Lavender Ameraucana is doing well in an Isolation tank inside my brooder with my 2-week-olds.
The list of eggs I have bought on
ebay. So far I have not hatched a single egg that has come from
ebay. The 4 I hatched came from BYC-ers.
12 WCB Polish eggs
8 Bantam eggs
14 barred rock eggs
15 black cochin eggs
20 BBR Phoenix eggs
13 mixed bantam/ serama eggs
8 bantam Araucana eggs
8 FBC Maran eggs
4 RIR eggs
and here my memory gets a little rusty so the ones after this are from memory, because
ebay will only go back 60 days.
14 White leghorns eggs.
9 Barred rock eggs.
18 Barnyard mix eggs
12 E.E. Mix eggs
8 E.E. eggs
and at least 60 of my own E.E. eggs, of which I have hatched 1, the one that is currently struggling. I have 2 more due tomorrow.
The BYC eggs - I have gotten 33 from Daisychick and 30-ish from Lanae Cash of Cash's Blue eggs in California. And the egg swaps from this thread!
I took my homemade incubator (the TVbator) apart today and put the wafer T-stat back into my second hovabator. The homemade unit was a combination egg dehydrator and egg cooker! Maybe with the hovabator with the turner running as my setter and the other one as a hatcher I can get my hatch ratio up, because I am at 1-2% rate right now. Colorado is SOOO dry in the winter, add a heating unit and you have DRY!
Well, goodnight all, I hope all your temps are stable, your humidity close and your eggs fertile!