Ah, so it’s an attempt not to “have all of your eggs in one basket”? Ha ha! Sorry lame joke! After removing clears, we have a total of 16 eggs left that we’ve been incubating, with 10 of those being shipped Black Copper Marans that I can barely candle. Wednesday night is day 18 and we plan to put them under our two broody gals then, so hen and pipped babies can chatter and start bonding. I had thought that I’d keep the most questionable ones in the incubator, but we recently had an incident with a black rat snake raiding a setting guinea on a nest that resulted in me taking a dozen guinea eggs and putting in the incubator. Since I only have the one incubator, lockdown would be a pain and could compromise the guinea eggs, so I’m rethinking the broodies. One broody is a barnyard mix and one a silkie. I think that the mix is more likely to abandon slow hatching eggs, so I may put the more questionable eggs under the silkie in hopes she will be more patient with the hatch time. Decisions decisions! Ours are first time broodies too, so no guarantee of good behavior!
Pretty girl, Easter Egger kind of a look but blue instead of green and more productive layer? I love the blue feathers and don’t have any blue birds, which must be why I’m attracted to the idea of the Arkansas blue! On the AB thread on BYC, someone did that the AB were developed from blue birds from the Whiting project. I just checked and there’s not much recent chatter in that thread so not sure how it’s all going. I haven’t pursued eggs because the birds are supposed to be flighty, and I think I’ve got the flighty chickens covered already in our flock! We have an East Frisian Gull hen that is so beautiful and still so terrified of me. Sigh. She’s a very consistent layer, but lays medium sized eggs. We had a cockerel EFG, but he died of Marek’s before we could breed them.Eeeek!! So cute! I know they're still wet but it sure looks like you have 2 pullets there!
I think the primary distinction between Whiting's True Blues and Arkansas Blues are just that they were originally developed by different people with the same goals, consistently blue eggs. Since I have experience with the Whiting's and not the Arkansas I will say that the eggs are a lovely blue color every time and my Whiting's also keeps up if not surpasses my White Leghorn in egg production! I get an egg every day from her unless it's stormy or blazing hot, then she lays every other day. I also think she's an adorable smaller chicken that lays a decent sized egg! They also vary in color quite a lot so it will be interesting to see what hatches this time!
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Yes, looks like we have three of us making a go of it with new Momma broodies! That’s me, CluckNDoodle, and Bookworm0124! Anyone else on this June hatchalong working with first time broodies?
I think that I still see intact veins at the edges - I certainly wouldn’t toss the egg!
Yeah! Are these all call duck eggs? Are they like domestic mallards, tending to hatch more towards day 26 than day 28?
I'm not sure if I can sneak babies under a duck like you can a chicken, they're usually still pretty alert at night. Has anyone here tried?
