My Araucana Hatch! * 4 HATCHED - Chick PICS!! *

[MichiganWoods]

Just ordered half a dozen eggs last night from Jody (hinkjc). Can't wait for them to arrive! I'll be hatching them in my fridge-a-bator, which I finally installed a CPU fan in. It holds temps consistently between 99.3-100. I'll be hand turning, as my auto-turner won't fit in there. I am working on fixing this problem for future hatches. I'm going to buy a replacement motor from the manufacturer and rig it up to a smaller rack.


Anyway, will post when I get them, when I set them, and when they start pipping. EEEE!

 

[MichiganWoods]

Egg arrived at the Post Office yesterday! Shipping was a little rough. One egg got smushed. But thanks to the beautiful packing job, all of the others were safe. Jody kindly sent two extras, so even though one was lost during shipping, I still have more than 6!

All eggs went into the incubator last night, so by my calculations, I should be expecting fuzzy-Araucana-butts on or around the evening of April 9th.

If I get any good candling images in a few days, I'll post.

 

[Hooterville]

Good luck with your hatch. One of the best hatches I've had was from Charlie and Jodi's Aracaunas. I have 5 whites, a duckwing (I think that's what she's called) and a beautiful black rooster. Several are rumpless and I have 1 white roo with a single large tuft and then a little tuft. He's a sweetie. They've recently started laying the most beautiful blue eggs!

Here's 3 of the ladies.

My black roo

and Josie--I'm still not sure about her color.

 

[Guitartists]

for your hatch!

I adore my Araucanas that I hatched from them ... the roo is a bit of a spaz

But the hen is SOOOOO sweet!

 

[hinkjc]

Good luck with your hatch Cass!

 

[MichiganWoods]

Beautiful birds, Hooterville!! Thanks for the well wishes. Can't wait to see what colors my little ones will end up being.

Guitartists, thanks! -- Aren't most roos usually a little bit spastic? All of mine have been, it seems!

Thanks, Jody!

 

[MichiganWoods]

Tonight is day 5 and I just wanted to give a quick update. 6 out of 7 eggs look to be developing! Tomorrow I'm going to try and get a picture of the one that has the VERY nice and VERY visible embryo. The rest of the little buggers are behind their air cells. They couldn't hide though. I saw their veining.

The last egg looks potentially like it wasn't fertile, or maybe it was a double tufted and so wouldn't develop, or the P.O. scrambled it for me. I won't know until about day 14 when I would be willing to open it and see what was up. All in all Jody, I am very pleased. And it's only day 5!

I love this process.

 

[MichiganWoods]

Since these eggs are a little smaller than the previous eggs I incubated, I had to adjust my setup for taking photos. But like my last batch, the blue/green shells prove harder to photograph than the ones I posted on my BYC page.

After some adjusting in Photoshop with exposure, and brightness and contrast, I was able to pull the embryo and veining into focus. Here's the very nicely developing embryo I mentioned last night.

I don't think I will be able to get much better candling photos on these, but I will try again on Day 12. Other than that, I will post another update when I have pipping.

 

[Hooterville]

Wow, Cass, great job! I so admire your pictures. I'm just getting to where I can actually candle and see something--I'm still a candler in progress!

 

[CANDLE98]

That egg looks scary! I looks like some spider monster! But other than that I can't wait until I can candle my eggs next week! Good luck on your hatch