Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[gilavina]

Quote:
fantastic! Are these your eggs or some you had sent to you?
Man, it sure is quiet in here this morning so far....maybe its an excuse to get a few extra minutes of sleep...its lookin rainy and overcast...definitely not inspiring for doing some more work outside. haha...I am sure I will anyways....just can't last a day without playing outside...er...or working...whatever you want to call it

They are my eggs, I set all the rest of the eggs that I didn't send to Debbi and Raven for Mel. I hope I get as many chickies as he is hoping for and some extras so that I can finally get in touch with others who wanted chicks. Barnies go into lockdow on Thursday and more eggs go into lockdown first of the week, these are the eggs from CP and my eggs that I am doing a hatch along with Math Ace on......then I set a batch of Marans for myself...I have received some requests for roosters from the Davis pen so I figure I better get crackin' on hatching some boys out if I can.

Still dark out here this morning and wet, windy and rainy. It's very special.

wow..you've got quite the hatching schedule going these next few days! Mel did tell me you were hatching some eggs for him and sounded pretty excited about it! How are the barnevelder eggs looking? lots of good ones? I bet you are getting so excited for all the babies to come join you! I should be getting notice on the chicks i ordered as they should be hatching today and shipping tomorrow. I elected to do no hatching this week for that reason and that I'm going to a sale over the weekend. Guess I'll just have to get my hatching fix getting excited that others have lots of hatching going on

 

[pinkchick]

Yep...getting pretty excited! Ohhh....I forgot about the Barnevelder eggs that are coming from my friend Farmer Johan in Conneticut this week. Hope these eggs fare a little better than last years. Out of 3 batches of eggs last year....we got 2 boys and one girl and let me say that using one pullet is very slow going!

eta: I have no clue as to how the Barnies are doing.....I'm not candling those either.

 

[Ivywoods]

There's a guy that wants 2 dozen fertile marans eggs. I've just started saving them. I have no idea what to charge. He's going to drive quite a distance to come and pick them up. They "should" be fertile, but I really don't have a way to test that. The rooster has been in with 6 hens for over a week now, and he is doing his thing, so I'm hoping.

Does $1. per egg sound reasonable?

I have about 8 dozen eggs I am going to have to scramble from my leghorns and all my other hens. I ran out of egg cartons and eggs started piling up in baskets and ice cream buckets. I suppose they are all right, but I'm not going to sell them as fresh unless they ARE fresh. Looks like the dogs and chickens will be getting scrambled egg treats for a few days.

 

[gilavina]

Quote:
That sounds kind of like what my experience last year with hatching eggs was....one chick here, a couple chicks there, never better than 3 at a time. After finding out it was due to my temp regulator going out slowly, I decided I'd try again this year and after the last hatch of shipped eggs I can say I am very happy to have a basket full of splash babies. I have some other shipped eggs due to hatch weekend after next and have been doing a different method of incubating and so far it is going really, really well. I put in 18 dorking eggs and only two were clear....every other one is developing, I'll know more when I candle on day 14 (this friday). The 10 BCM eggs I have in there with them I haven't even tried to candle since they are so dark.
I also get the feeling of things being slow going when only working with one pullet. I have that going with one of my breeds of birds. Luckily I have other projects to distract me so I don't get really annoyed about it.
I don't know how you are able to hold off candling..you are much more patient than I...i only ever did that with one batch of shipped eggs and it was like torture for me. They were eggs i was really hopeful about, but i decided the torture of not knowing was worse for me than the real possibility nothing was happening in my eggs.

We are a funny bunch

 

[Debbi]

Good morning all.

Another dreary day here so far, may get sun this afternoon. Thursday they say we may hit 80!!!! Surely, that won;t go unpunished

The pip in the bator did not progress overnight. It was a small pip, so I'm not worried too much, and it has attempted to zip a little this morning. If it had zipped more last night, I would've helped it out this morning. I'll give it till 11am, then I'm going in!

 

[pinkchick]

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That's AWESOME IVY!!!

Sacrifice one or two eggs if you can and crack them open to see if they are fertile. This way you can be sure he is getting some fertile eggs. I sacrifice several eggs and try to check each individual girls eggs from shortly after they start laying and from time to time throughout lay cycle to check for fertility or continued fertility.

$1 an egg sounds very reasonable to me.....if I were to think about it, I guess I would be getting anywhere from $1 to a $1.25 per egg, but then sometimes I discount it even more if I can't supply a full dozen. I hope other come by and share their thoughts with you. I am very curious as to the going average rate that folks are charging per egg.

 

[pinkchick]

Morning Debbi!

Glad to hear that egg is still progressing. Hope to hear news soon of a new chick.

#6 just hatched and several more pips and some of the pips are in eggs that I haven't been able to get to hatch yet!!!!!! So excited for these!

 

[Debbi]

How are you doing this morning, Miss Pink?

Just went in after the egg, glad I did. This egg seems to have a double membrane?? The one on the shell, then the chick had another wrapping it. Maybe nature's way of compensating for the dent/crush in the end of the egg?? Never seen this before, has anyone else? Hope it's not too late. Freed the head and one shoulder, will let the chick do the rest...I hope.

 

[enggass]

Quote:
That's AWESOME IVY!!!

Sacrifice one or two eggs if you can and crack them open to see if they are fertile. This way you can be sure he is getting some fertile eggs. I sacrifice several eggs and try to check each individual girls eggs from shortly after they start laying and from time to time throughout lay cycle to check for fertility or continued fertility.

$1 an egg sounds very reasonable to me.....if I were to think about it, I guess I would be getting anywhere from $1 to a $1.25 per egg, but then sometimes I discount it even more if I can't supply a full dozen. I hope other come by and share their thoughts with you. I am very curious as to the going average rate that folks are charging per egg.

I have to agree that your egg cost is very reasonable... Why is it then that you will see websites selling Marans eggs for $60/dz?

 

[pinkchick]

Quote:
Doing okay. Thanks!

Glad you went in after it. So I thought there were two membranes in an egg.....the one lining the shell and then the one around the chick that has the veins in it and that's that one that will shrink wrap around the chicks and it can also get stuck to the outer membrane of the shell and that causes all sorts of not so nice things to deal with.

Is the second membrane you are talking about the one I am talking about? Or are you describing something completely different?