June Hatch-A-Long

[lithiachick]

here's the two cuties my broody button quail hen hatched out yesterday....their so fricken cute! and please excuse the dirty shavings...have left the hen and her mate completely alone except giving food and water since she started sitting as i didn't want to bother her...but i will be changing it soon now that she's hatched out babies

I only see one? Maybe I just can't see it because they are so small! Very cute little bitties! Congrats!

 

[chickinthebator]

Dear all,
I haven't been on backyard chickens since last summer so it is nice to be back. I recently set 6 chicken eggs under a broody duck. 3 cream legbars and 3 Sussex.

However, there have been a series of events recently that have left me questioning the integrity of the hatch:

Firstly, having not marked the eggs it has been impossible to tell the fertilised ones from the non fertilised ones (hatched by our 3 chickens).

Secondly, another chicken became broody and the duck gave her some eggs but took a lot of the straw so the chicken couldn't really make a nest.

Thirdly, some eggs have been thrown out by the duck and upon inspection, one if them had what had been a chicken around day 8 in development rather horribly.

The duck has now abandoned ship despite today being day 20 so we have put as many of the eggs as we can under the other broody chicken.

It may well be day 21 in fact - what are the chances of a hatch here?

Many thanks

 

[Cynthia12]

Dear all,
I haven't been on backyard chickens since last summer so it is nice to be back. I recently set 6 chicken eggs under a broody duck. 3 cream legbars and 3 Sussex.

However, there have been a series of events recently that have left me questioning the integrity of the hatch:

Firstly, having not marked the eggs it has been impossible to tell the fertilised ones from the non fertilised ones (hatched by our 3 chickens).

Secondly, another chicken became broody and the duck gave her some eggs but took a lot of the straw so the chicken couldn't really make a nest.

Thirdly, some eggs have been thrown out by the duck and upon inspection, one if them had what had been a chicken around day 8 in development rather horribly.

The duck has now abandoned ship despite today being day 20 so we have put as many of the eggs as we can under the other broody chicken.

It may well be day 21 in fact - what are the chances of a hatch here?

Many thanks

You are lucky to have a broody hen for those duck eggs..should be good. It takes 26 to 28 days usually for ducks to hatch. So, they still have a while. Some may be even longer..I found this out by having someone bringing me duck eggs. If you think about how far apart the first egg and last egg were laid..makes sense it will be a while for them all to hatch. Hopefully the mama hen will stay on them for a while.

 

[Cynthia12]

I woke up to a baby this morning. The one that had pipped, didn't look any different all afternoon or until bedtime. So I kind of wondered if it would have hatched, but it had. Two others working on it!

 

[Melabella]

I woke up to a baby this morning. The one that had pipped, didn't look any different all afternoon or until bedtime. So I kind of wondered if it would have hatched, but it had. Two others working on it!

I needed to read that as I have worked myself into a worry that these three pipped eggs I've been starting at since I woke up are not going to hatch. I do hear intermittent faint chirping but even that is making me a bit concerned. My last chicks that hatched were classic ,, pip... wait a bit... perfect zips while chirping up a storm, and out! Boom....


Fingers crossed,
MB

 

[Cynthia12]

I needed to read that as I have worked myself into a worry that these three pipped eggs I've been starting at since I woke up are not going to hatch. I do hear intermittent faint chirping but even that is making me a bit concerned. My last chicks that hatched were classic ,, pip... wait a bit... perfect zips while chirping up a storm, and out! Boom....


Fingers crossed,
MB

Yes, every hatch is different. They will get busy when they are ready.

 

[WalnutHill]

I've been hatching out turkey eggs nonstop since March with great success since updating my foam incubator controls. Here are a couple of the current batch of Narragansetts:




I then bought from a local farm two dozen "Easter Egger" eggs where a Cream Legbar rooster was servicing hens that were mixes of Maran, Ameraucana, and Legbar. So these are truly mutts but I had high hopes for them. Shell colors ranged from pure pale blue to the color of a cured green olive (BCM/Ameraucana)

All the eggs were refrigerated. They had probably 60 dozen eggs in the fridge, bantam, quail, brown, white, tinted. So I am guessing that some of those eggs were probably more than a month old, and they were cold as ice.

I brought them up to room temp in open baskets, and inspected them. Two were cracked and I discarded them. The following day I set the remaining 22.

After 10 days, candling showed 10 viable eggs.

After 18 days, candling showed 8 viable eggs.

3 eggs pipped at day 21, but never unzipped. Two eggs internally pipped (cheeping), but never externally pipped. And three eggs never rocked, peeped, or pipped.

Not a single egg progressed beyond pip after 24 hours, and when cheeping sounded weak and desperate, I opened the air cells. All had fully absorbed the yolk but had not been able to rotate in the shell to zip, despite sufficient air cell size and not wet at all. Upon opening the shells, they began the twitching which is necessary to complete yolk absorption and blood vessel retraction. I left them until the blood vessels receded in the inner membrane (I gently spread Vaseline on the membrane, not near the face, to avoid dehydration) and then assisted when necessary to disengage from their shells one to two hours later. The end result was...


Five beautiful little mutts, three with fuzzy feet. One dirty blonde with the faintest back stripes, two black and silver, and two showing the Cream Legbar markings from daddy. They are healthy, happy, and active.

The three that had not pipped, that I did not interfere with, were fully developed, ready to pip, but died in the shell. They were also beautifully marked and perfect in every way, but never made it through into the air cell.

I don't usually hatch out chickens, as we've been raising sex link layers. But they shouldn't be any harder to successfully incubate than turkeys, right? My turkeys also hatched from eggs I had in the fridge for about a month, and they had no issues of the magnitude of these chicken eggs.

 

[OzarkCountryGirl]

I just candled my turkey eggs and I have 14 for sure viable and active, with 6 eggs that are iffy. I started out with 30, but had a hard time with the humidity as it's been raining like crazy and even no water in the incubator and an external fan (all but 6 eggs are a still air incubator), the humidity in the incubator has spiked to 70% several times. The eggs are due to hatch next Saturday (the 28th), and I'm praying that those 14 will hatch out perfectly with no assistance needed.

 

[mrchicks]

Day 20 over here. Not a pip, not a peep, nothing. It's killing me.

 

[jlynnp]

The Quail go on lock down tomorrow and the Lavender Orrps on Sunday. Fingers crossed for a decent hatch!! I am picking up 6 Cream Legbar chicks tomorrow - 5 pullets and a roo. I have more Quail eggs due to hatch around July 1 and will have Pendenesecna eggs due to hatch sometime in July.