About a month ago, I lost my beautiful bantam Cochin roo to a fox. Not only was Swiffer handsome but he was also a kind and gentle little guy.
About a week after he disappeared, I decided to take some of the eggs from his girls and place them under one of my broody Silkie hens. Swiffer’s girls were mostly Marans and Welsummers so, it was easy to tell the difference between their eggs and the eggs in the flock where my other rooster resides.
I took 6 refrigerated eggs and 6 non-refrigerated eggs (the non-refrigerated eggs were collected on the same day that I placed the refrigerated eggs underneath the hen (about a week after losing Swiffer)). I marked the refrigerated eggs with a “C”; the non-refrigerated eggs were left unmarked.
This past Friday was official hatch day. Even though I couldn’t initially tell by the shell fragments which batch some of the eggs that hatched out came from, thru process of elimination, here’s the rundown on what has transpired:
Refrigerated eggs:
1 broke early on – non-viable
4 hatched out and chicks are doing well
1 is still under her but I don’t think it’s going to end up being viable but, when candled it looked like "something" was there.
Non-refrigerated eggs:
1 pipped but did not survive hatching (was the first egg to pip)
2 eggs that were candled Friday (not viable – only liquid inside)
3 chicks have hatched out and are doing well
Grand tally is 7 out of the 12 eggs have hatched out successfully; all the chicks are feather footed and, of course, just as cute as can be.
About a week after he disappeared, I decided to take some of the eggs from his girls and place them under one of my broody Silkie hens. Swiffer’s girls were mostly Marans and Welsummers so, it was easy to tell the difference between their eggs and the eggs in the flock where my other rooster resides.
I took 6 refrigerated eggs and 6 non-refrigerated eggs (the non-refrigerated eggs were collected on the same day that I placed the refrigerated eggs underneath the hen (about a week after losing Swiffer)). I marked the refrigerated eggs with a “C”; the non-refrigerated eggs were left unmarked.
This past Friday was official hatch day. Even though I couldn’t initially tell by the shell fragments which batch some of the eggs that hatched out came from, thru process of elimination, here’s the rundown on what has transpired:
Refrigerated eggs:
1 broke early on – non-viable
4 hatched out and chicks are doing well
1 is still under her but I don’t think it’s going to end up being viable but, when candled it looked like "something" was there.
Non-refrigerated eggs:
1 pipped but did not survive hatching (was the first egg to pip)
2 eggs that were candled Friday (not viable – only liquid inside)
3 chicks have hatched out and are doing well
Grand tally is 7 out of the 12 eggs have hatched out successfully; all the chicks are feather footed and, of course, just as cute as can be.
