Mahonri's 2nd Annual BYC EASTER HATCH. Post pics of your chicks!

[SteveH]

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Serious??? Did you see them do it?? Holy Cow!!!

aww... sorry, I hope the chick at least lives a good life and is cared for but if someone has to steal it then I doubt that... funny, if someone didn't have the money and just asked me for a chick, I'd probably give them one as long as they had a plan for feeding and housing the chick. People just don't think to communicate before jumping the gun and stealing.

A few years ago I had planted tomatoes on both the east and west sides of my house, to allow the neighbors on either side to have tomatoes without encountering each other [they can't get along]. When the tomatoes started getting ripe, I realized the east neighbors were gone when I had planted, and I had forgotten to ever tell them to help themselves. Even though I never seemed to find a ripe tomato on the east side, several were coming on again, so seeing my neighbors in their yard, I went over to tell them I had planted them to share, and to watch and get them before some critter did. They went silent and studied the ground for a bit, then the wife sheepishly said "Ya know, they sure tasted good when we thought we were stealing them".

I may have ruined it for them, I had plenty of tomates to pick off that side after that.

 

[Rathbone]

Nice one Steve! Yes, I am sure our "predator" was the two-legged kind. My husband heard the fence make that "ching" sound and went to look out the window to see a young woman taking off at high speed. He couldn't identify her other than she was "gabacha" meaning anglo. The funny thing is, we live in a SMALL town. And I will know a wheaten americauna when I see one!
Someone stole a hen from us once before. I was all fired up. The really funny part is - they returned it about five days later. I think they realized that they weren't set up to keep a hen and simply put her back (I know she didn't take off because mine have their wings clipped regularly).
I am done being upset about it - just going to concentrate on enjoying the seven little balls of fluff I have left. Sure is nice to be able to share (vent) to all of you though and feel like you are holding my hand. Nice to have this little community!

 

[LarryPQ]

So when is lockdown, exactly?

I am pretty sure I set Mahonri's eggs a day early, so if lockdown is tomorrow for the Easter folks, I should probably do it today.

 

[SarahIrl]

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Was a bit. Helped nearly half, and lost two 24 hours after hatch. Thought I was going to lose four but left two in bator going out to work yesterday morning in a rush and came home last night expecting them to be goners on the floor of the bator, they were up and looking for dinner. Happy days!

Just the goose eggs left: seven eggs, 1 out, two pipped, and the rest just sitting there. These will take F O R E V E R. Plus, had a mad afternoon trying to stop my brother in law's huge pig (called Doris) from breaking in to my garden. She was trying to push through the hedge after flattening the fence behind it. Silly pig. She must weigh as much as an average bull, she is totally massive. Am NOT going out to try and get a pic of her breaking and entering, I am terrified of the pig. If she gets in she'll just walk through all my poultry fencing to get at the chicken food so I am praying she stays where she is. Bleedin' pig.

I desperately want to see pics!! You MUST go take some!!!

See page 545...

ETA: Oh, and the pig stayed out until b-i-law got home and fixed fence. No bacon for breakfast

Will see if I can get a pic of the pig in the morning, I just realised you meant Doris, not the baby ducks... doh.

 

[SteveH]

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I hope you get the Ameraucana back. I was able to laugh at the neighbors sneaking over to pick the tomatoes I had planted for them anyway.............................. but hate being stolen from; and confess I have not always dealt with the culprits in a very sane manner.

 

[yotetrapper]

Calling all turkey hatchers.............ok, other than 28 days instead of 21, anything else I need to do different to hatch turkeys?

 

[LarryPQ]

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Force-feed electrolytes? I learned that one the hard way.

 

[wolftracks]

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Everything else hatches, but I find full term DIS chicks when I open the BCMs after a few days. Do I need a higher humidity for them or a lower one?

From now on I'm going to start sanding and see if that helps. Figures I have about 30 of them in the bator for various hatches.

I use as low a humidity as I can during incubation, and then I up it as high as it can go during hatch. They can't take on water during confinement, in my opinion, but higher humidity can halt the evaporation. That's accomplished by using paper towels as described in my Incubation Cheater. My take is that Marans shells are less capable of evaporating and I have often found that the DIS are accompanied by a lot of liquid, so I decided to try the suggestion to sand them. It worked well, so I've used that method with shipped eggs thereafter, particularly with very dark eggs. I don't use it for my eggs from my flock, because it doesn't seem to be as necessary if they haven't been shipped.

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And where do you keep your humidity, during confinement for the last 2.? days?

In general, the Incubation Cheater method I use to increase moisture makes the humidity 65-80% but I quit using a hygrometer long ago- I just follow the method and don't look anymore. If I get really good evaporation in the beginning, I can see that the air-cells are very large, and I'll know that the prevention of any more evaporation during confinement will allow them to not only keep enough moisture to move internally, but most importantly, it keeps them from becoming glued, which will occur if the air is dryer in confinement...as I just experienced on my forgotten batch which hatched in the turner in fully dry air...

I'm very fond of paper towels in the channels, with another on top of the wire- this gets moisture wicking up into the one on the wire which has massive surface area for evaporation because both sides are exposed. In a still air, this does fantastic. I just sit the eggs on the wet paper towel and they do great. Sometimes the incubator is super-full and there are some on the wire and some on the towel- there is no difference in hatch rates, regardless of whether they touch the wet towel or not.

I prefer an LG for hatching, and I use a different box than the incubation period, so I don't have to worry about the temperature change as the egg are lowered from the turner height to the wire height. In times when I had to use the same box, I propped up the wire on bowls of water so that the eggs stayed the same distance from the heating element.

I'm very fond of opening the incubator when I oughtn't, so I prefer the LG to the Hovabator because the Hova doesn't have the little windows that can be opened for quick access without massively impacting the humidity and temp of the whole unit. This often means burns on the hands from the heating element, but I deserve that!

Overall, I have to say nothing beats the Rcom, because you can open it all day and mess with whatever, plus it truly is set-and-forget and no change needs to be made for confinement, BUT- obviously the expense is huge, and I have had chicks get stuck because the fan is pretty powerful.

I really need a Sportsman or some homemade cabinet, but I enjoy staggered hatches so much I have a hatch a couple of times a week...so that would be hard to mitigate.

I maybe just need a line of rcoms...that would be fabulous if I wasn't poor.

One BCM made it out with a little help, 2 were clear..hhmmmm... I pipped the top of the other 2 and they were wrapped tight in the inner membrane and so were 2 OEs, I decide to help them out, no sign of blood, be they had been in there too long. Ever try to give CPR to a chick? yeah didn't work, out of 14 I ended up with 1 BCM, 3OEs and the rest are BCM x Games. There's on OE that I got unwrapped, but I'm not sure it's going to make it. It's still absorbing the yolk a bit and breathing, but it doesn't look very strong.

Out of the two BCMs that were shrink wrapped, there was fluid in one and the other was completely dry. Those two eggs were in a carton and right next to eachother. Figures they were my darkest eggs. They looked to be 8's. Some of the girls are starting to really lay darker and one is starting to lat lighter. Don't get that since they mostly started up the same time and didn't lay all winter.

My broodie has an egg that is probably a 6 or 7 under her, so I hope it makes it.

Didn't do very good with selling chicks at the auction this week, so I guess I'll be using CL again. Been a while, but some need to help with feed costs.

Had to do the yellow polish on the head as they hatched, since I haven't gotten any wheaten chicks lately and they all look like BCMs till they feather out. Weird thing is my Davis girls lay some good sized eggs. The Games are so much smaller, but their chicks are huge when they hatch. I hope I have some pullets in the next couple of batches so I can keep some as layers. I really need to go to the processing class I was invited to, so I can process roos later too.

The OEs I get are really big chicks also, but again they look like BCMs. I get all feathered legs when they hatch out black no matter what breed of hen. I'll also keep a few of those later and breed them back to probably my black AM to keep the olive color going. What I did by mistake though was mark all but the BCM with yellow polish and now I'm now sure who my OEs are, but selling this batch anyway.

My grand total was 8 not including the one wrapped in the paper towel.

I'm using an LG as a hatcher. It always worked well until I started having all my hatching problems. I've been using your cheatsheet and I love it, but I'm still having problems with these BCMs. I'm just glad I haven't had any of those zero hatches since NYD hatch.

 

[yotetrapper]

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?
I'm confused.......how are you marking them AS they hatch? Do you have them separated in the incubator?

 

[tazcat70]

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