Paneubert's Quail Aviary Adventure

[paneubert]

Seeing a lot of "white" babies and wondering if I was sent a lot of A&M or english eggs. We will see. Maybe some will be more silver or gold.

Up to 18 babies as of this morning before work. Will be interested to see what I find when I get home tonight.

 

[DK newbie]

Lots and lots of babies I suspect

 

[JoeQ]

Great job, looks great!! I find at night they huddle together to sleep, I too have an area like your dog house and some seem to love it and others go in to check things out and are right back out.

 

[paneubert]

Lots and lots of babies I suspect

Yep......

 

[paneubert]

More babies! I don't even have an accurate count at this point.....I just grab a handful every once in a while from the incubator and move them to the brooder. One wry neck, one really bad splay leg, and one that just was too weak to go on. Still happy with what came out of the eggs that I was sure I had "fried" early on in the incubation. I have 120 silver strain eggs coming next week, so this will all be repeated soon. Going to add another fan to the incubator before I incubate those new 120.

 

[JoeQ]

120 more coming! you have much more patience than I do!!!! where do you keep them all? Do you sell them as well, if so I'm interested for sure!

 

[paneubert]

I posted on Craigslist before I even started incubating these ones and got a ton of interest. We all know Craigslist can be.......hit and miss with people following thru, but my hope is I will sell a lot of these as well as the next batch. I do need to replenish my own flock, but might wait for one more cycle before I do that. We will see!

 

[JoeQ]

can eggs make it across the country? I'm in Pa and would be interested in some silvers!

 

[paneubert]

They can, this batch and the silver batch are both coming from Ohio to Washington State. The eggs I got last year came from somewhere in the midwest or south I think. It really depends on how nice they are packed and how nice the postal service is. If you want to give it a shot, I would check out the following:
http://myshirefarm.com/index.php/product/1761/

I might have some silvers breeding after I hatch them and let them grow, but that wont be for 3 months minimum.

 

[paneubert]

Update for today. Woke up and went down to check on the babies. Found what looked like a battlefield. There were 5 or 6 babies laying with their legs rigid spread all around the food and water, away from the heat, not moving and with their eyes closed. I was super bummed out. They all seemed to still be alive, but not really responsive at all and pretty stiff. I had to go to church, but figured maybe they were just super cold. Put them all under the heat where the other babies of course started trampling on them. But there was not much else I could do. Luckily when I came home, all but one are fine and I cant even tell which ones were the ones with problems.

Here is what I am convinced happened. Every time I have brooded a batch, I have had a light bulb indirectly casting a gentle light 24/7 so they can see where they are going at night. Not for heat, but just for some dim light. Yesterday I sold some babies to someone who needed a clamp fixture, so I sold him the clamp fixture I was using for my "light" bulb. This meant my babies went overnight in the pitch darkness. I think they wandered out of the heat from the ceramic heater and couldn't find their way back in the dark.....

So moral of the story is that brooding with daylight/natural darkness with ceramic (no light) heaters has a risk if you ask me. I like the ceramic/no light bulbs (usually either 75 or 100 watts), and using a 250W red bulb is definite overkill for heat reasons, but at least it lets them see where they are going and where they need to get back to! I can't decide if I want to toss a 250W red bulb in my hanging fixture to kill two birds with one stone or not. Well.....I don't want to kill ANY birds. Haha. So that isn't the best turn of phrase to use, is it!