Long story here. I have a favorite hen, a Barred Plymouth Rock named Lexie. For months, many thought she was a rooster because the rules of Barred Rock sexing were all broken by her. She is full of personality, that one, but she's at the bottom of the pecking order(except for the 12 week old chicks). When I bought a Barred Rock rooster back in October and then put him with my Girls in November, he didn't pay any attention to Lexie. She flirted and fawned over him shamelessly! She's very small for a standard Barred Rock, but her coloring is very pretty. I only have two grown Barred Rock girls, but her brooder mate, Ivy, has not-so-great barring and I really only wanted babies from Lexie. Just in the last couple of weeks, I started seeing fertile eggs, but only from Lexie, no other hens! Hawkeye isn't the pushy type of rooster and although he is a year old, he was never with any hens before mine, so it took him awhile to get it right. I wanted to give some to a friend to incubate to mix up her Barred Rock gene pool since she's given me many BR eggs to incubate from hers, but my rooster just slow in coming around. I decided to incubate one just to be absolutely sure it was fertile before collecting eggs for my friend and it was! SO, it is still in the bator and set to hatch next Sunday. And my friend, Kate, has five of the Lexie/Hawkeye eggs developing in hers as well. Just took us five months to get to this point, LOL!
Now, the hardest part.....step away from the bator....only long enough to check temp and humidity, and peek in the window for pips! I noticed the humidity spiked today...from a comfortable 50% to just over 60%. Is this a bad thing?? It keeps going up...i just checked it, and over the last hour, it is up to almost 70% I havent changed anything....same old same old for the last 18 days. Oh I DO hope this hatch works....
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