"RIR" just hatched...

[stephenhall1987]

Do these look like RIR?

I bought 2 dozen "fertile" eggs from a local. They were supposed to be rhode island reds. She did say that she also has white cornish rock hens.

This was my first time incubating eggs. 10 eggs were not fertile. 8 hatched just fine. The others did not hatch...

All but one had wing feathers of 2 lengths. I didn't notice any with black lines on their heads.
They're about 3 weeks old now, and 5 of them seem to be growing pretty large combs on their heads.

I'm afraid I've gotten mostly all cockerels.
I'm sure the white one is not rir.
I'm wondering if the others are mix breeds.

 

[gander007]

Well 6 of them look like hatchery RIR chicks .....

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

None of them look like heritage RIR. The red ones look like Production Red babies or mixes. The white one, who knows? It might be a mix with a Cornish Rock.

Also, just because the eggs didn't hatch in an incubator doesn't mean they weren't fertile. There are a lot of things that can go wrong in the first few days of incubation that can cause "clears" other than infertility, especially if you don't crack your eggs open to check why they didn't hatch. In early development, you don't even get blood vessels until day four, and the blood will decay and you won't be able to see it if the embryo dies around that time and you don't crack the egg to look until day 22.

Hatching in an incubator is nothing like hatching under a broody mama, where 100% hatches are common. A 40% hatch your first time out with an incubator sounds about par for the course, honestly. Here's a good trouble shooting guideline: http://msucares.com/poultry/reproductions/trouble.html#INF
And a discussion of true infertiles vs. early deads: http://www.aviagen.com/assets/Tech_...HowTo4-IdentifyInfertileEggsandEarlyDeads.pdf

 

[stephenhall1987]

Thanks for the responses!

I did crack open all of the eggs. 10 of them had no growth that I could see. The rest that didn't hatch were full chicks.

Here is a picture from today: