Rillowens first Hatch-Along! FOOD THEME

[GreenJay]

Let's grow food chicks!
Go Cupcake!

 

[thecatumbrella]

Little Anchovy, I'm rooting for you and your pals!

 

[Rillowen]

Good morning Food Eggies! Waffles, time to get toasting!

Waffles is up and toasting!

 

[Rillowen]

All the eggs, even the 2 i was concerned about, are doing well! I just did a very quick candle looking for bloodring or movement. On Friday I will do a thorough handling and check their grams lost, they will be 14 days then!

 

[GreenJay]

Great cooking food chicks!
Go Cupcake!

 

[Rillowen]

Any ideas for how to keep the egg numbers straight when they hatch? I would love to be able to attach a picture to each name when hatching comes, but im not sure how to keep them straight! I suppose I could stickers their ankles, but im worried that might just cause problems and not be worth it.

 

[GreenJay]

Any ideas for how to keep the egg numbers straight when they hatch? I would love to be able to attach a picture to each name when hatching comes, but im not sure how to keep them straight! I suppose I could stickers their ankles, but im worried that might just cause problems and not be worth it.

little leg bands? Are those big enough to write a number on? At least with mixed parents, not all the chicks will be identical, LoL in theory.

But shells get knocked all around during hatch so someone would have to see each egg hatch to id that chick, remember that chick to band it... Could try hatching boxes to separate certain ones?
Um, good luck with that?

 

[Rillowen]

little leg bands? Are those big enough to write a number on? At least with mixed parents, not all the chicks will be identical, LoL in theory.

But shells get knocked all around during hatch so someone would have to see each egg hatch to id that chick, remember that chick to band it... Could try hatching boxes to separate certain ones?
Um, good luck with that?

All I could think of was hatching boxes too lol. But thats alot of little boxes! 23 individual boxes... i may have to give up on the idea.

 

[GreenJay]

All I could think of was hatching boxes too lol. But thats alot of little boxes! 23 individual boxes... i may have to give up on the idea.

Maybe a few boxes with few eggs in each box each. Are the eggs different enough you could put one of each type in each box? I don't think I saw the eggs other than candling pics.

 

[Rillowen]

Maybe a few boxes with few eggs in each box each. Are the eggs different enough you could put one of each type in each box? I don't think I saw the eggs other than candling pics.

Not really, they are all cream or brown, some light brown that I found out were being laid by the same type of hen from the dark brown. Even then the parents are white hen or red hen, white roo or red roo, with 1 barred rock hen. I cant tell the barred rock eggs from the white rock, i thought i did but it turned out the white rocks were laying differently! So even if the eggs were different the hatchlings might look the same. An egg laid by my red dorking and sired by the white roo is white, but and egg laid by a white hen and sired by my red dorking would be brown, but both would be dorking/white cross. of course I'm hoping my red dorking sired some from the red dorking hen. Id like to have a few pure ones. i guess maybe I can separate them into a few boxes and we can guess when they hatch, at least then we will be trying to guess between 3-4 per group rather than 23. I'm excited to see what the crosses turn out like.

Warning, genetics talk incoming!
Since my barred rock is a hen she won't pass the barring on to any daughters, but may pass on the black feathers, so depending on the father I might get black and red or black and white from her, which is pretty exciting. My white roo technically is carrying the barred gene i think, but he doesnt really show it, which makes me confused because i thought even if they were heterozygous for it its supposed to show, but maybe it's because his "primarry feather color" is white. He was a barnyard mix, he looks pure white rock, but he gets some random feathers with black and white barring sometimes, has a single one on his tail right now. Either way we could wind up with some barred dorking hens from him, which could be gorgeous. I'm hoping to end up with basically heavy breasted red dorkings that lay brown... thats my end breeding goal lol. We will see!