March 2017! Hatch with us!

[Jessimom]

Just set an incubator with 13 Bielefelder eggs from chickielady,15 Cochin/Frizzle eggs from WVduckchick and 4 of my own BR eggs. Have three pips in good spots near air cells in the Welshies incubator.

Gosh I hope this duck hatch goes well. I have a feeling I should have done way more researching and studying ducks before attempting this. Good thoughts that I don't blow this!

Go duckies go!!!! Good luck!!

My duck eggs go into lockdown Saturday!!!!

Good luck with your lock down!

Oh, and I sold last weeks batch of little mixed cuties. They leave tonight.

Congratulations - did you sell them all to the same person?

 

[Birdydeb]

Yes...put them up on my friend's FB page and they were gone in 15 minutes. Demand around here didn't seem to be high for mixed chicks so I sold them pretty cheap. Strange thing is...they got attention BECAUSE of their various colors. I didn't even have time to get them up on my page!

 

[WVduckchick]

Just set an incubator with 13 Bielefelder eggs from chickielady,15 Cochin/Frizzle eggs from WVduckchick and 4 of my own BR eggs. Have three pips in good spots near air cells in the Welshies incubator.

Gosh I hope this duck hatch goes well. I have a feeling I should have done way more researching and studying ducks before attempting this. Good thoughts that I don't blow this!

Good luck! Hope you have a great hatch!

 

[dan26552]

What are your ducks? all flipping ducks are adorable! Love ducks!

I have five Pekin hens, a Blue Swedish hen two Pekin drake a Blue Swedish drake and a Mallard all mixed together so I'm never sure what I'm gonna get, my duck went broody and I got what I guess were pekins (all solid white) then I set some in the bator and got all Swedes and Swede pekins and my second batch was Swedes and one Pekin. It's fun not knowing.

 

[dan26552]

Go duckies go!!!!  Good luck!!
Good luck with your lock down!

Congratulations - did you sell them all to the same person?

Thanks.

 

[Jedwards]

I'm hoping the call ducks don't get me in trouble either. I'm technically out of our development, but I will still be concerned if they are way too loud. I only plan to keep 6-8.

Isolate it, immobilize it, and pray for the best.


See, I have to disagree somewhat with this. I know this is what has been crammed into folks heads, but I do it quite often, and the membrane does not dry instantly. I don't open the lid more than necessary, but I do it enough to know that its not an immediate death sentence. I also run fairly high humidity, just in case I need to open it. There are several threads here full of people who are "hands on" and open the incubators alot during "lockdown". So anyway, to each his own.

I'm 50/50 on the last part there. I agree with both of you. However, for the novice hatcher I believe it is best to not open it (very difficult and tempting to avoid) because they will dry out too much even for just a quick open. For my last batch of quail that might have been an issue because I was running the humidity on the lower side 55-65% and opened it several times to pull chicks out where I probably should have just done two opens to take chicks out throughout the hatch. Also quail eggs are so much small and probably dry out quicker. Just had to throw my 2 cents in ha ha

 

[Jedwards]

Also, I have a second batch of quail eggs going into lock down today. I only have 8 eggs and this was my first time with shipped eggs. There were 15 but the shipping took 5 days and we had below freezing weather almost the whole time

so 7 were not developing/ infertile. These are italian/golden ones (my fav) so I'm going to try to be a lot more careful and won't open the incubator until at least the majority hatch and I don't see any other pips. Also from other readings I'm going to try to keep the humidity at least at 60% at all times, this time.

 

[WVduckchick]

I'm 50/50 on the last part there. I agree with both of you. However, for the novice hatcher I believe it is best to not open it (very difficult and tempting to avoid) because they will dry out too much even for just a quick open. For my last batch of quail that might have been an issue because I was running the humidity on the lower side 55-65% and opened  it several times to pull chicks out where I probably should have just done two opens to take chicks out throughout the hatch. Also quail eggs are so much small and probably dry out quicker. Just had to throw my 2 cents in ha ha 

You make some great points, thank you! Quail are definitely different. I only hatched 2 sets of quail (2 dozen and 3 dozen) and you are right, they can dry out faster, being so tiny and their shells are quite different. I think many breeds could dry out quicker. Some breeds are not so much affected.

And I agree its a good practice to Not open, but I don't like to scare people into thinking its immediate death to the chick, when I know that's false, as an umbrella statement. I'm not saying Jessimom said it was immediate death! It's just that we do have some die-hard "don't-you-open-it-for-anything" folks on BYC in general.

Good luck with the quail hatch. Sorry for the rough trip to get to you.

 

[generaldsherman]

Drat! Lost my last turkey poult.

 

[orrpeople]

Drat! Lost my last turkey poult.

Oh no, I am so sorry!