June Hatch A Long

[SueT]

Moonshine and her chicks who are 3 1/2 weeks

They interact w the orphans thru the fence, couldn't get a good pic. Orphan Spitzhauben is 2 days younger, and looks quite a bit smaller.

Moonshine swears at the orphans and they move back from her...

 

[Mixed flock enthusiast]

So, better late than never! Here are some of my babies... significantly grown up from hatching. All but the last pics (one of my BCMs) are my Olive egger over either a red layer or my Columbian Rock. Huge color variation, as you can see. And I’m seeing lots of little cockerels in here... sigh... so many boys, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s somehow me! Please excuse the mess, I’ve just gotten home from the long weekend and I’m going to be cleaning the brooder/barn tomorrow!
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The one “with the makeup” a girl! View attachment 1833028
This handsome little gent might replace his daddy, but then again, daddy was quite sweet until 21-22 weeks too!
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I’m pretty sure these next two are ladies as well, but the second might be a guy...View attachment 1833031View attachment 1833033
And my Marans are super small by comparison, but I think I might have two females.
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As you can see they are getting quite adept at escaping when the brooder lid is up, time to build even more chicken tractors I suppose!
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Don’t worry! I didn’t take pictures of all 29 of them... most follow these color patterns, some are clearly boys, others are still questionable on gender. They are now off heat, as DH gave up on maintaining my battery rotation for their plate. Lots to do now that I’m back home. DH managed to do an ok job taking care of all 67 chickens while I was away. I did lose one of my older rescues, but I’m not sure my being there would have helped much for her.

I’m probably going to do another order for chicks instead of hatching for July, (100 birds!), though I might do an August hatch if my luck with boys on straight runs holds true!

Thank you all again for the wonderful thread and all the support. I’ve gained a lot of confidence in my ability to hatch this time, and I credit my success mostly to all you awesome people that helped me out along the way!

Awesome group of chicks Kris!!!

 

[Mixed flock enthusiast]

Today, Moonshine and her 3 chicks got to re-meet the abandoned-egg chick and its adopted sibling, in a see-no-touch situation. So far so good. The orphans are out of the house now and will live side by side with the others. 3 weeks old.
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I wondered how you would handle this - nice setup!

 

[Mixed flock enthusiast]

I am aiming for 2 different patterns, the Silver Duckwing (silver grey dorking) and a Columbian Pattern (Light Dorking's). I want to make a hardier version of dorkings because so few survive to adulthood or even processing age. Once they reach sexual maturity they seem to be hardy but before that well less than half survive. The breed is old and very inbred. Although I am not the best person for breeding to the SOP I want to keep Dorking's for meat so I came up with the plan to use Red Rangers to draw out the Columbian Pattern and to improve the Silver Duckwing (silver grey) pattern. If its not exactly like a dorking then oh well, it will likely improve the meat qualities since I used a meat bird. If it turns out there is a dwarf gene then its going to burn me pretty hard down the road. But with improved survival rate I will be happy to deal with the dwarf birds coming out from time to time... they will eat less anyways, and maybe there is something I can do with the dwarfs... make Bantam Dorkings?

Huh, curious! What do they die from?

 

[Mixed flock enthusiast]

If you'll recall I was given some eggs a few weeks ago. One carton from a friend that didn't know what she had, well...they hatched last night and I still don't know what they are. They're kind of ratty little babies, one with feathered legs and I'm going to go out on a limb and say they're mutts. lol, But so sweet just the same! And I guess this would be considered a 100% hatch even though there's only 2 chicks because all but these 2 weren't fertilized and I didn't set a couple because they were cracked.

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Aww too cute!!!

 

[Mixed flock enthusiast]

Well got home and it was worst case scenario. Veining was totally gone in the non pipped eggs and they were smelly and had more fluid than when I left this am. The two pipped eggs had passed while I had been gone. It looks like shortly after I left this morning. So that means that my hatch total for this hatch is 4 Lone Oak Crele and 3 English Crele. I tried to set the camera up in the barn so we could watch them but unfortunately it's too far away from the wifi. Going to have to ask Santa for a wifi booster for Christmas I did do do a video while I was out there though. They are awfully cute.

Sorry to hear that you lost those!

 

[Mixed flock enthusiast]

It looks like I’m either getting notifications for the June or the June - July hatch, but not both. Blinked and missed 50 posts!!!

 

[Mixed flock enthusiast]

Not the most picturesque setting, but I finally got a better pic of Susan and her shipped in babies! Susan has forgotten all about all of the time we’ve spent with her, and she’s pretty sure that we are deadly threats to her babies. Sigh. Since she can’t get the babies up the ramp to the brooder box, that makes for a fun evening of chasing terrified and fast babies as Susan does her best to dissuade us... I’ll be pretty happy when these chicks figure out the ramp!

 

[CluckNDoodle]

Not the most picturesque setting, but I finally got a better pic of Susan and her shipped in babies! Susan has forgotten all about all of the time we’ve spent with her, and she’s pretty sure that we are deadly threats to her babies. Sigh. Since she can’t get the babies up the ramp to the brooder box, that makes for a fun evening of chasing terrified and fast babies as Susan does her best to dissuade us... I’ll be pretty happy when these chicks figure out the ramp!

Well she certainly does look content with her new babies at least!

 

[SueT]

I’ll be pretty happy when these chicks figure out the ramp!

I've read so many accounts of chicks having trouble understanding ramps that I made stairs for mine. Mama taught them the stairs on second day outside, and they have just popped right up and down ever since.