LOCKDOWN! Let the hatching begin

[Beckey2054]

Finally! We have 38 so far..two more look to be pipping and the rest may be duds. When I candled them in the beginning there were a bunch that looked clear, but I left them just in case. I was suprised at how quickly we went from 5 when we left for school clothes shopping to 22 a few hours later whe nwe called the nieghbor to check on them for us...then 28 when we got home and four more within the next half hour. Four hatched overnight, and while I was helping a shinkwrapped looking guy (his face was out when we got home from shopping and he spent the night that way) another one popped out! the one I helped didn't look too good when I left for work...and one has a club foot. I tried making the little sandals I saw on another page, but his foot is just too small! In all, I am happy. I started with 60 eggs...that were shipped from Georgia...in the heat, it took almost a week for them to get here...so even a 50% hatch rate would have been good. Now I need a quail house. I dont think they will fit in their aquarium for long.

Congratulations!!!

50% on shipped eggs is Great and little more than what I have ended up with so far.. These eggs that we just hatched started out as 265 eggs..whittled down to 133 eggs in incubator, and 111 actually hatch, with one that was not going to survive right off the bat... we have had 110 survive at first..but we have had a few die this week

, which was hard as I tried hard to save the ones I thought would make it. Of the ones born with splayed legs (we had 5 like that) only one survived. We now have 104 babies remaining, as another also passed that was just not "right" and had no idea what was wrong with it.. Still, 104 babies is a great number and I am scrambling to get enough room for them all.. Right now they live in a 150 gal long aquarium, so will have enough room for a couple weeks.. hopefully.. and then we will have to start splitting them up into the other brooder and cages we have. Now if we can keep the squabbling to a minimum I think the rest of them are healthy and will survive.. We have had several squabbles resulting in blood, but nothing major that required more than a temporary isolation from the group.

I just had mine start to hatch today, I had 26 eggs from my 4 coturnix hens. I expected some to be bad, because one pair is both Italian. It looks like I have 13 so far. Some are Pharoah, and others are Italian.

Do quail chicks do something to get the other chicks hatching, as most of them hatched within an hour of each other.

Congratulations!!!

They do call to each other while in the egg.. If you hold an egg about to hatch to your ear, sometimes you can hear them chirping inside the egg.. Once I hear chirping in the eggs I know I should see babies really soon..

Our oldest Cots should start laying eggs any day.. Our males are trying soooo hard to mate with the females, so hopefully they figure it out and we can actually get a few fertile eggs from our own birds(which these are all browns).. My husband wants to try to hatch out the ones we get before it gets cold (but I think its getting too late in season already).. and hopefully we do get some soon. He almost has their cage finished and it should hold 60 cages, which each cage will hold 4 -5 birds so it will be very nice!! They will be going into the garage middle of October, so will be fairly warm all winter long. Hopefully that means we will get eggs all winter (not for hatching though, I do NOT want babies in the house for weeks until old enough to handle some cold) and come spring we can start hatching babies all over again..

 

[cmtigger]

Congratulations!!!

They do call to each other while in the egg.. If you hold an egg about to hatch to your ear, sometimes you can hear them chirping inside the egg.. Once I hear chirping in the eggs I know I should see babies really soon..

Oh, I heard the chirping the morning that they hatched, but I've had chicken eggs chirp before too, and their hatch was much more spread out- over two days, rather than a couple hours.

I ended up with 15 total and all are still alive, except one just isn't growing, so I keep expecting to find that it has died, but so far it's still there. (6 Italians, 6 Pharoah, and 3 that are probably Roux. The iffy one is an Italian.)

 

[Beckey2054]

WOO HOO!!! YAY!!

SO excited!!!

WE GOT OUR VERY FIRST EGG TODAY!!

We were very surprised and happy (even though we knew it would be soon, just didn't know when) Our coturnix are 7 weeks old yesterday, and this morning we had an egg.. Only one, but at least they are starting!! My kids were screaming, and running around the house cheering.. I sure hope they didn't upset our girl too much with the noise so she will still lay again tomorrow..

And here are some photos of the babies.. They are a week old now (were a week on Thursday and Friday) and are growing up so fast.. The white ones look like an egg (white body, yellow head..) especially when they are sleeping and have their head tucked down and so it looks like the yolk in the white... cute.. The smallest bird, we named him Skreecher. (he is the brown.. he is smaller than the little Tibetan, but just barely). He was one of the babies born with splayed legs. He is also the only one to survive in that group. He is now all over the place, and is normal as all the other birds with the exception that he is the smallest bird of them all.. He eats like crazy so hopefully he will grow up normal..and he is one of the few that loves to be held and have attention from us. Guess it was from all the doctoring we gave him.. Cute little fuzz ball..

 

[Peacerose]

Congratulations on the egg! Soon all your hens will lay. The babies are darling.