Lock down!

[underground chickenman]

Forty-nine jumbo cots locked down and cookin'. Anybody with me? Sunday night they should be poppin' out. Time to start making more pens.

UGCM

 

[TonysChickens]

I got 34 that went into lockdown monday night. Its hatching as I type now. At least one is zipping and 7 more pips. All cots, mix of browns and hopefully italians ( italian with a brown male and an italian male)

 

[marshburg birds]

Howdy i bought 36 quail eggs from an auction and supposedly they are fertilized. I already own about 15 chickens.... And 5 duck !!! I put the eggs underneath my chickens. They got right on top of them... tucked them all in, everytime I check on them the hens are laying on them. Is this how I hatch them? Everyone is talking about incubators but I don't have one of them.

 

[wishful suburbanite]

Yup, me too. =) I'll have hit 18 days by Sunday night, so hopefully I should be seeing something around then.

I started with 40. 3 had small cracks and candled clear, so I tossed them. 6 were intact but candled clear and I just left them in. 2 eggs lookd like they could have quit halfway through.

29 actually looked really good, though. At least they looked very dark inside. Hopefully I don't have too many late term problems.

I incubated dry, averaging under 30% humidity but at lockdown I've been having trouble increasing it. It easily drops into the 50s and I was aiming for 65%, though the entire bottom of my homemade incubator is covered with water with three large sponges sitting in it and plastic mesh suspended above all this. I just add water with a turkey baster. I think the vent holes in my homemade incubator would be considered quite large, like 3/4 inch by 1 1/2 inches, but I only have two open right now.

We'll see.

 

[Mwilliams32931]

I have buttons that will go into lockdown on Sunday! I can't wait to see them all popping out.

 

[SavageChick]

Wow, forty-nine eggs! I'm not as large-scale by comparison to most of you, but still pretty excited to have one button pipping this morning, with three others wobbling around on the hatching tray. One has the nail polish that I used to cover a hair-line crack when I set them, so it's great to see that it has made it this far. Good luck this weekend everyone!

 

[marshburg birds]

So does anyone know if my regular chicken hens will hatch my quail eggs? They are laying on them.

 

[wishful suburbanite]

D= Three hour power outage today and I wasn't home.

I have no idea how low my incubator temps might have gotten but after the power had been back on for maybe 20 minutes it was at 93 when I walked in. 93 doesn't sound too bad, but I'm afraid they might have been down to 70 at some point. They're on Day 16 in lockdown.

Well... do you think they're dead?

 

[underground chickenman]

Regular size chickens might be to heavy or rough on quail eggs, but if it's looking good so far and you don't have an incubator, what choice do you have? Let it play out and see what happens. Broody bantams are usually used for hatching quail eggs, for folks who want to go without incubators.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

UGCM

 

[sphanges]

D= Three hour power outage today and I wasn't home.

I have no idea how low my incubator temps might have gotten but after the power had been back on for maybe 20 minutes it was at 93 when I walked in. 93 doesn't sound too bad, but I'm afraid they might have been down to 70 at some point. They're on Day 16 in lockdown.

Well... do you think they're dead?

I had a longer outage than that on day 14 (maybe up to 20 hrs) and they were at 60ish deg when it went back on. All the eggs hatched fine, just about 18 hrs later than I was expecting them to start. Don't give up!! That close to hatch they seem to be quite resilient.

B