Hi everyone,
I finally committed and bought a GQF 1502 this year. It was really close between that and the Dickey model. I plan on starting over with quail this year, and plan on hatching a lot! I bought about 22 doz quail eggs at an auction a couple weeks back. To my surprise there were about 3 dozen small white eggs mixed in with the Coturnix. I’m almost positive they’re bobwhite but don’t have a lot of experience with them. I figured I’d put them in and give it a shot anyway. I also got about a dozen Silkie eggs from a friend which I put in, reluctantly. It’s not ideal with this mixed hatch for my first trial run, but it’s a relatively smaller batch to work with.
Im not sure what to expect come Tuesday, but when I set the eggs in the bottom tray yesterday, I realized I’ll most likely be buying a Hatcher sooner than later! Hopefully the coturnix come out a variety of colors, I believe after candling I put 200 eggs in. I lost a lot of eggs to infertility/the cold I think, but that’s the gamble when you buy at an auction. They looked great with the exception of the ones that were too dark to candle. We will see what happens! I also have a few dozen eggs that should be arriving this week from MyShire farm, which I’m excited to add some color in the event these eggs all hatch out with the regular brown Pharaoh pattern.
This weekend I built a decent size brooder in my garage that should house them for a couple weeks. I also built a grow out pen last weekend to pair with a prefab wire one, all in all I can hold about 100 adult birds. I plan on keeping about 50 adults.
A couple questions I have that I may post again on a direct thread, but my GQF has the option to turn the automatic turner off. In the event I set all 3 trays with quail eggs at once couldn’t I just build a hatching tray that sits in each tray and leave them set for the last 3 days as such?
My humidity is between 60-70% right now with 1 wick pad. For staggered incubating/hatching, do you think the higher humidity would affect eggs that are earlier in development worse than it would ones that are later in development? Or vice versa?
Thanks everyone! Happy hatching
I finally committed and bought a GQF 1502 this year. It was really close between that and the Dickey model. I plan on starting over with quail this year, and plan on hatching a lot! I bought about 22 doz quail eggs at an auction a couple weeks back. To my surprise there were about 3 dozen small white eggs mixed in with the Coturnix. I’m almost positive they’re bobwhite but don’t have a lot of experience with them. I figured I’d put them in and give it a shot anyway. I also got about a dozen Silkie eggs from a friend which I put in, reluctantly. It’s not ideal with this mixed hatch for my first trial run, but it’s a relatively smaller batch to work with.
Im not sure what to expect come Tuesday, but when I set the eggs in the bottom tray yesterday, I realized I’ll most likely be buying a Hatcher sooner than later! Hopefully the coturnix come out a variety of colors, I believe after candling I put 200 eggs in. I lost a lot of eggs to infertility/the cold I think, but that’s the gamble when you buy at an auction. They looked great with the exception of the ones that were too dark to candle. We will see what happens! I also have a few dozen eggs that should be arriving this week from MyShire farm, which I’m excited to add some color in the event these eggs all hatch out with the regular brown Pharaoh pattern.
This weekend I built a decent size brooder in my garage that should house them for a couple weeks. I also built a grow out pen last weekend to pair with a prefab wire one, all in all I can hold about 100 adult birds. I plan on keeping about 50 adults.
A couple questions I have that I may post again on a direct thread, but my GQF has the option to turn the automatic turner off. In the event I set all 3 trays with quail eggs at once couldn’t I just build a hatching tray that sits in each tray and leave them set for the last 3 days as such?
My humidity is between 60-70% right now with 1 wick pad. For staggered incubating/hatching, do you think the higher humidity would affect eggs that are earlier in development worse than it would ones that are later in development? Or vice versa?
Thanks everyone! Happy hatching
