Rockethoe’s global hatching adventure: Slovenian eggs in Chinese incubator.

[rockethoe]

Hi folks,
I have posted in previous places about this, but thought for progress going forward I’ll keep it in this thread.

We keep a small commercial flock of pastured laying hens. Currently we buy in POL lohman browns, but want to get away from that model to a closed flock model.

I am planning to import eggs from PRC in Slovenia- the breed is Slovenian brown.
Slovenian brown seems to me to be the most commercially viable pure breeding layer of a brown egg. PRC use it as one part of the parent stock for their own version of hybrid layer. Order in may to receive in June.

PRC. Have agreed to export fertile eggs to me. There’s aren’t too many regulations around importing from another eu country, but I will be visiting my local gov vetinary office (kinda like at extenstion office in USA) this week to see what my obligations are exactly.

We have ordered a 400 egg incubator from alibaba, shipping today. This isn’t the classic small Chinese yellow incubator that is so widely disdained. It’s uncharted waters. But I see the same model being retailed in Europe under different names.

I’ll keep updated here how it goes with importing the eggs and the incubator shipping and quality etc. as well as the hatching once we get that far.

I’ve never incubated eggs before so we are jumping in the deep end here, although we have raised flocks from day olds before.

 

[Mantisquailman]

U could also get some RIRs

 

[rockethoe]

U could also get some RIRs

They are essentially a strain from RIR bred solely for production. Any other RIR I’ve seen doesn’t have the same egg count though.

 

[Mantisquailman]

O...ok

 

[rockethoe]

The incubator should be arriving in Europe in the next couuple of days and then a short hop skip and a jump to us. Work has started on disassembling the shed and rebuilding it into a hatchery. Most of the uprights, and many of the cladding boards are rotten as they weren't treated for about 20 years. Roof is good and floor is ok. I'm also keeping an update on my TikTok so head over there and hit the blue plus sign too!
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGem4QPJp/

 

[rockethoe]

Also I visited my local vetinary office to clarify what I needed to do paperwork wise for importing the eggs. They were very helpful and told me that all I need to do was register as an importer on the "traces" system, and in fact that she would even do that for me.

 

[rockethoe]

Started work on rebuilding the shed for our 400 egg hatchery conversion. Knocking down and rebuilding the rotten and woodwormed walks. Video here