Miscellaneous Meeps - Hatching my Dreams

[Antiocheggers]

As I'm heading into my second hatch for the year, I wanted to begin a thread documenting this hatch, and hopefully future hatches, as well as follow my grow outs. I'm working to get a few pens set up to breed silkies to the SOP and also begin a journey with Swedish Flower Hens and Ermines. We will still have a mixed layer flock and likely a few totally adorable bantams, we currently have 2 little Ameraucana bantam chicks and may have a few more hatching out to join them soon!

I have 10 silkies growing out from two different breeders that are 8 and 14 weeks old give or take a week or two, 1 light blue, 4 splash, and 5 silver based black from paint breeding.

In January I hatched out 5 silkie chicks from a breeder, 1 chocolate, 1 chocolate paint (say what!?!!!!), 1 blue, 2 blacks, 1 splash, 3 Swedish Flower Hens, and the 2 Ameraucana bantams, a bunch of silkies from my flock and a couple layer cross chicks. The hatch % was very low, maybe half the eggs I set were viable, and I had more quitters than I was expecting. I have since changed the feed (at the start of winter I moved them to an organic feed, and found out that it didn't have much in the way of vitamins for my girls), and I'm not using the NR360 where most of the quitters happened which was were the bulk of the eggs from my flock were. I had the breeder's eggs in the Brinsea and only had 1 quitter per breeder's set of eggs.

I set the following eggs this morning:
13 Ermine / black
20 SFH
16 extra special silkies from @Debbie292d (there was 1 egg-trocity by USPS)
8 Fizzy the EE / Black Australorp
4 Fizzy the EE / Barred Rock
1 Dark Brahma
8 Chonkers / EE
4 Chonkers / Brown eggs (BR, BA, RIR)
11 Blue satin / chocolate
12 Blue satin / blue partridge
2 Ameraucana bantams
6 D'Uccles
3 D'Uccles / silkie

It is still early in the season so I'm not sure what % will start, we will know next Saturday!

My dream is to have breeder / show quality silkies in black, blue, splash, maybe a paint at some point, and for fun, chocolates. I also plan to hatch out these Ermines and SFH's and work on setting up, small, but high quality, breeding pens for them as well. The Fizzy / BA chicks should be great layers, the BA's are my oldest hens and still laying well as 4 year olds, and the EE hens Fizzy came with are also very consistent layers, so I'm hoping for very healthy and consistent layers that will lay some shade of pale blue or minty green.

Are we claiming any of them ? You know I will go for the dark Brahma.

 

[TwoCrows]

Some of of our chickens went to their forever home. She came over to get 2 and left 6. Hallelujah! View attachment 3766837

Wonderful! What a cute picture! ❤

 

[2ndTink]

Some of of our chickens went to their forever home. She came over to get 2 and left 6. Hallelujah! View attachment 3766837

That's wonderful! Congrats to you and the lucky chicks!

 

[2ndTink]

Are we claiming any of them ? You know I will go for the dark Brahma.

Yes! You are welcome to claim and name, I was just going to start the list of what is developing today, and I'll finish it up tomorrow once I do the official candling. I haven't been able to tell yet if the Brahma is developing, but if it is, I will stick your name by it! Instead of listing all 110 eggs and then scratching out all the non-starters, I thought it would be easier to wait for Day 7 and just list the ones developing. My workload is picking up so trying to keep things as simple as possible!

 

[2ndTink]

Alright, here is our list of developing eggies! This is just the start, I will be doing a full candling tomorrow with an update to this post!

Ermine:
2
4
5
8
12 Lacie @Nero70002
Swedish Flower Hen:
14
15
16
17. @GreenJay
19
20
21
22
23
24. Blossom @Nero70002
26
28
29
30
31
32
33

Fizz Bang the EE crosses:
BA
51
53
54
55
56
57

BR
58 ?
59 ?
60 ?
61
Chonkers crosses:
EE
63
64
66
67
68
69
109
Brown Eggs
71
73

Dark Brahma
Sherlock / Watson @Antiocheggers


Reminder, each egg listed here has started to develop, no clears on this list!

 

[TwoCrows]

Alright, here is our list of developing eggies! This is just the start, I will be doing a full candling tomorrow with an update to this post!

Ermine:
2
4
5
8
12
Swedish Flower Hen:
14
15
16
17
19
20
21
22
23
24
26
28
29
30
31
32
33
Debbie's Silkies:

Fizz Bang the EE crosses:
BA

BR

Chonkers crosses:
EE

Brown Eggs

My silkies:
Chocolate hen

partridge hen


Bantam:
98

Reminder, each egg listed here has started to develop, no clears on this list!

lots of eggies are growing!!

 

[2ndTink]

lots of eggies are growing!!

Yes! I'm hoping to see a lot tomorrow too! Maybe even some I've missed... hehe. I won't toss until D10 just to be sure.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Some of of our chickens went to their forever home. She came over to get 2 and left 6. Hallelujah! View attachment 3766837

Congrats! I've got a group of 8 birds going to their new home this evening. It's definitely a relief because they are eating sooo much and my coop feels a bit tight with all of them in it along with the rest of my flock. It's still tough, though, I have such a bittersweet feeling about it. I've talked with the lady taking them for a couple weeks (she had to postpone picking them up initially, so I've been holding them for her) and I'm sure they're going to a great home. But they're still my babies! I just can't keep them all, though.

Yes! I'm hoping to see a lot tomorrow too! Maybe even some I've missed... hehe. I won't toss until D10 just to be sure.

Fingers crossed for lots of growing babies! I'm the same way, unless it's stinking or seeping or something like that, I won't toss any eggs until later. I'm too afraid I'll toss a viable egg that I just didn't see right otherwise!

 

[Nero70002]

Can I get 12 ermine and 24 sfh please? Or are we not doing that yet

 

[Antiocheggers]

Dark Brahma name Sherlock/Watson