Pekin Bantam breeding advice

[PuddleEndChicken]

Thank you. I've ordered an incubator to arrive tomorrow as I really want some chicks from this combination of hen/rooster. My plan would be to candle everything tomorrow and put any that look viable into the incubator.

I might leave her in the pen with some rubber eggs and see if she lays another clutch and goes broody on those ? Might need to put the rooster back in again for a while to make sure they are fertilised.

Maybe as she only stopped being broody a couple of months ago she's not keen to start again ?

Maybe she's not sitting because she knows that the eggs are somehow not viable (too old ? half incubated ? rooster somehow wasn't fertile ?)

 

[Mosey2003]

You really ought to run the incubator for a few days before using it and make sure it's keeping temperature correctly...

 

[PuddleEndChicken]

You really ought to run the incubator for a few days before using it and make sure it's keeping temperature correctly...

@Mosey2003 well that was very good advice as we had a quite cheap incubator picked up off Amazon and I'm not sure it has kept temperature properly.

A long post but just wanted to update you with a very sad end to this story

We put 12 eggs in the incubator, we got 3 chicks on day 22, but in the end none survived. 1st one pipped the shell and died literally half hour later with just beak sticking out too mature in shell as yolk all absorbed etc, 2nd was an assisted hatch but it had a deformed head with a lump behind skull and splay legs and died after 24 hours, 3rd one was very weak, survived 3 days but I think was blind as clumsy and didn't go towards food, splay legged and struggled to swallow and then had some seizures and died. Really really sad to watch the little guys I did my best hand feeding them with sugar water and Kaydee Exact but they were too weak. Also the brooder is quite drying and they were too weak to get their own water through the night so I think got very dehydrated.

I candled the other 9 eggs - they were in various stages of development, as the broody had sat on and off before we put the eggs in the incubator. Some eggs were over 12 days old before incubation so were never going to develop, some had died at very early stages, some had developed in the incubator but then stopped.

LESSONS LEARNT
I'm just including these lessons in case anyone can learn from it:

1) I think the incubator temperature was maybe a bit low (or variable) because they were all late hatching and had deformities so as per your advice I need to sort that better next time (get a Brinsea incubator as more reliable).

2) if you are going for the incubator, then don't let the bantam sit on them (eg at nights) whilst she lays the clutch as some eggs start to develop and then die before you get to the incubator, maybe take the eggs away and store them and replace with rubber eggs whilst she lays the full clutch

3) better labels on the eggs with the date of laying so you don't waste time putting eggs that are too old in the incubator

4) it maybe better to have a back up broody hen and put all the eggs under her instead - at the same time as my failed chicks in the incubator I had another very reliable broody bantam sitting on duck eggs and she got 100% hatch rate with 7 lovely healthy ducklings....

Anyway thanks @Mosey2003 for all your support through this journey and would appreciate any further insights you or anyone has on this.