He is breeding back to other colors of orpingtons to introduce more genetic diversity and improve his partridges. He got his original stock from somebody recently, and didn’t like the quality, so he’s trying to improve it now. So there will be inconsistencies until things even out. I’m glad he’s trying to fix things, it just looks like he hasn’t reached a stable point yet and the birds still have issues
I don’t mind the color variation if the chicks were robust and healthy, but these ones clearly aren’t. If I’d known any of this sooner, I wouldn’t have sunk money and emotion into it, but when I ordered last year things seemed fine, and then we decided to do this sentimental second hatch for the kids’ favorite chicken’s siblings... We better get one healthy female out of this, because I’m not doing it again.
I absolutely will!
like that other one. Ugh. I need to find local orps to replenish my ranks whenever I need to, because I am done with shipped eggs. The two batches of local eggs I hatched along with mine all hatched 100% once they made it to lockdown, with no assistance and no defects. Nice healthy mixed breed flock, but oh so skittish and flighty! Orpingtons are the best and will forever have my heart, so I’ll need to find some good healthy ones closer by.
I know... That's why I got them shipped. As long as I find a local breeder though, being out of stock won't be a big issue for me because I'd be getting eggs again, and "signing up" for eggs way in advance like I've been doing so far with the two breeders I've ordered from. If you let them know a couple months ahead of time, they'll hold eggs for you come spring.
This one is quite a bit yellower than it should be. Probably has some lemon cuckoo orpington mixed into it. My daughter named it Lemonade 
Lemonade was the second to hatch and is one of my healthy looking ones.
Great video, great editing!
Thanks!
I only put them in cartons for lockdown. Up until that point, all the eggs incubated the same way, in the auto turner, where they were also upright. I'm not sure how much of a difference the carton makes at the very end and if they still need to be upright until hatch, given that 18 days upright should've allowed plenty of time for the air cells to reattach. By day 18 it's a chick, not a floating air cell anyway. But I've read that being upright also helps the chick orient itself properly. Again, not sure how true that is, and it's hard to find actual scientific evidence. But these eggs had such bad air cells and had traveled such a long way, that I wanted to give them every advantage possible, even if it wasn't proven effective. Figured it wouldn't hurt to put them in the cartons for a couple days at the end. In hindsight, I should've cut them up a bit, not just for airflow but also to make it easier for the chicks to get out... But I didn't think of it in time.
