Set eggs 3/5. Looking for others to hatch with!

[wholewheatchicken]

I haven't trimmed yet. That is what I thought I would try next. I wont be incubating anymore of their eggs until all of my shipped eggs are here and incubated. i just dont have the room in the bator.
I am so excited I got my first shippment of eggs that I am expecting yesterday and in the bator today! All bantam cochins of course! 4 mottled, calico mille, 3 buff and blue columbians, 2 blue calio mille, 3 red, 3 silver laced, 4 blue splash and 2 lemon blue.

I guess the only ones I really have in this hatch along are the 8 buff barred. I hope they are good eggs. I will candle this weekend.

I was just wondering because I had read that cochins can be hard to breed naturally if they don't have their cushions trimmed. I think maybe that's what happened to one of my silkies, at least I'm hoping that is what happened and she doesn't have some sort of a problem. I couldn't even claim to keep her for a broody because she's my toolbox girl! But you have to hand it to her for determination, sitting so long and rolling her imaginary eggs today

It might sound mean, but if you had seen her tending to her little ones, you would have laughed too.

 

[Peach2u]

Maybe if you take your girl who wants to be a mommy and lock her up in her own little world. She may do better and throw her some golf balls in for her till she gets the hang of it. I had to move mine out of the main coop. The bossy girls where pushing off of her nest. But they didn't want to sit on them. Silly chickens! So I put Buffy in a chicken tractor. Where she was very happy to be alone till my little girl found her and took all her eggs. So to keep her sitting till I could collect more eggs for her. She had a clutch of golf balls. 48 hours later she had her eggs back and seemed content again. Now the tractor has zip ties on the latches and a keep away from my eggs sign I found on google. So no chicks this week but next week I will be over run with chicks. 15 under the broody, 46 in the incubator{hoping for 1/2} and I ordered 20 black/blue copper marans from a local breeder. All due to hatch 24th-26th. We love our chicks. If you want to watch some great fun throw in live crickets! Bait shops are the cheapest. Pet stores will charge too much for them. The first time or 2 they wont get it but once they do they will kill each other over them.
Our chicken tractor

The egg collecting door.

Inside the tractor. Last year we used it as a halfway house for the chicks. This year momma and chicks

 

[wholewheatchicken]

Maybe if you take your girl who wants to be a mommy and lock her up in her own little world. She may do better and throw her some golf balls in for her till she gets the hang of it. I had to move mine out of the main coop. The bossy girls where pushing off of her nest. But they didn't want to sit on them. Silly chickens! So I put Buffy in a chicken tractor. Where she was very happy to be alone till my little girl found her and took all her eggs. So to keep her sitting till I could collect more eggs for her. She had a clutch of golf balls. 48 hours later she had her eggs back and seemed content again. Now the tractor has zip ties on the latches and a keep away from my eggs sign I found on google. So no chicks this week but next week I will be over run with chicks. 15 under the broody, 46 in the incubator{hoping for 1/2} and I ordered 20 black/blue copper marans from a local breeder. All due to hatch 24th-26th. We love our chicks. If you want to watch some great fun throw in live crickets! Bait shops are the cheapest. Pet stores will charge too much for them. The first time or 2 they wont get it but once they do they will kill each other over them.
Our chicken tractor

The egg collecting door.

Inside the tractor. Last year we used it as a halfway house for the chicks. This year momma and chicks

It's certainly worth a try. Right now I have two hens that are great broodies, but useless because they won't sit in a good place for chicks. The last girl sat in a feed bucket. I think part of the problem too is I shouldn't have let them continue to lay eggs where they did. I've wisened up to that. Wherever they have decided to lay is where they are planning to nest at. But these just got going on laying eggs so I was new to it and didn't have a clue. If I could get her to move somewhere safe, I could slip chicks under her soon. I hate it that these two girls didn't get any babies to gain the knowledge they need to raise chicks, but hopefully it won't affect their future mothering abilities.
I love that chicken tractor. How did you make it or where did you find the plans for it? And is it very predator proof? That is exactly what I want to do for my chickens. I would like to make some that can house two adult silkies at a time and some for mommas and babies would be superb and little guys would love it too! Wow, I need about 15. Do you think I could make it myself? I would do it if I could figure it out. I'm only sort of handy so fortunately I have a son who is very handy. Their dad is handy, but he way overdoes everything. An hour project will take three days. It will be great when it's finished, just not too great when there is so little time since he works so much.
And got to love the egg sign. My biggest threat around here to the eggs is my Westie. She's an egg sucker. Now if I could teach her to read........

 

[CALI CHICK]

Good morning WWC, How did your "week 1" egg weighing go? I'm curious if you candled and looked at the aircells for reference at all or are you just using the weight method this time?

Friday will be Day7 for my eggs and I plan to mark the aircells. It should be pretty easy with only 5 eggs.

I'll let youknow if they are textbook or not. I don't know about you, but this hatch is so much less stressful for me. Even my family noticed. Maybe because these are local eggs that cast me $5 & probably because I'm using a good incubator that's staying steady!

Tomorrow I'm picking up my Silkie eggs.

I just got an email from Sheri and she was telling me that the girls weren't laying very good at the beginning of the week and she had to give them all a pep talk!

It must have worked, because she said they picked up the production and she will have plenty of eggs by Friday for me. Speaking of silkies............Here are a couple pictures of some of her partridge silkies I thought you might like. They are BOV here in a CA show for 2 years in a row...nice, huh?

 

[wholewheatchicken]

Good morning WWC, How did your "week 1" egg weighing go? I'm curious if you candled and looked at the aircells for reference at all or are you just using the weight method this time?

Friday will be Day7 for my eggs and I plan to mark the aircells. It should be pretty easy with only 5 eggs.

I'll let youknow if they are textbook or not. I don't know about you, but this hatch is so much less stressful for me. Even my family noticed. Maybe because these are local eggs that cast me $5 & probably because I'm using a good incubator that's staying steady!

Tomorrow I'm picking up my Silkie eggs.

I just got an email from Sheri and she was telling me that the girls weren't laying very good at the beginning of the week and she had to give them all a pep talk!

It must have worked, because she said they picked up the production and she will have plenty of eggs by Friday for me. Speaking of silkies............Here are a couple pictures of some of her partridge silkies I thought you might like. They are BOV here in a CA show for 2 years in a row...nice, huh?

I LOVE THAT!!!!! You are one lucky chick. Would you ever consider sending me hatching eggs from her if I paid all the expenses? I hope I'm not being pushy!!!! She has pretty silkies.
Yes, I'm marking air cells too. And I have a broody that is one week ahead of me so I'm using her egg to compare my air cells to. I had a test egg, buy my little artist daughter picked it up yesterday and drew all over it and squiggled along the lines that were the week 1 and 2 cells. I have to have my DH make me a new test egg today. I am going to drill it out and put it somewhere safe to use as future reference. When I get it done, I will take pictures of it and some measurements and post for you too in case it will help.

 

[mayberrygirl]

Those are some very pretty silkies!! We are on day 11 here.

 

[Peach2u]

We built it our selves. We looked at all the plans on BYC and took ideas we liked and put them to our use. I had drawn a basic blueprint of what I wanted and hubby picked the size it should be. It has a deadfall hatch in front. But a smart raccoon could open it. So we (meaning hubby) drilled holes in the side of the frame and when the hatch is down a tight metal bar slides across the top. The large side door is on with eye hook latches. and the nest box has a roll barrel latch. As I said a smart coon could defeat it. But no problems so far. You could always put padlock type on instead. But the lil coop area is solid. We put the floor down on top of the frame. Last month a skunk tried to get in. Besides the smell all you could see was where it dug under the run and also dug a huge hole under the hatch door. Once it figured it was solid it looked for something easier like my garbage can. We want to add a skirt around the bottom as well as wheel. So the chickens will have more floor space. As it is we have a handle on each end and it is heavy. We would also have changed the nest box area. We would have left out he sidewall. Chicks hide in there and it's hard to get them out. The perch in the inside is useless for standard adult birds. As a brooder is was fine I had a little ladder to it. The chicks would play king of the hill. Space wise I should have made it square. Could have had more living space. But it also adds weight. That tractor was our first build project. as with any project we ran into problems that we had to get around. Like what to do at the very top to keep rain out. A bent piece of flashing screwed down worked well. It was also put together with what was on hand. The only thing we bought was the wire and hardware. Now we are working on a large coop.
We went with 1 window in the coop and making a closet on the end.

It also has a 40 pound deadfall hatch on a pulley system my 4 year old can open. The only thing that can get in
is a human and bear

We put scrap vinyl down on the floor and in the nest boxes. Makes it easy to scrub down. Also we didn't put a lip on the
floor in front of the doors. We just sweep everything out of the double doors.

 

[meshellrose]

very nice

 

[CALI CHICK]

Peach, nice, spacious coop and great tractor!
My DH built my chickens' coop too and I helped with painting and whatever I could. It was made from a playhouse kit that was left behind at this house when we moved in. So, besides $10 for clearance-shelf paint, it was free.

WWC-The last time I visited Ohio, I bought an Amish star to go on the chicken coop. It turned out pretty nice.
I built a "tractor" on my own out of scrap wood and a roll of chicken wire-pretty much-LOL. I only put the chickens in the tractor during the day so they can be in the yard a little. If I leave them in the chicken coop/yard past 11am Buffy starts squaking and complaining and they all pace back and forth along the gate. I only have 3 hens, which are in my avator. I also have 4 blue silkies that I hatched a month ago from shipped eggs in the brooder. Plus, I bought 2 "black silkies" at the feed store (I couldn't resist) 3 weeks ago also in the brooder. Then I have 5 EE eggs in the incubator on Day 6. And, most importantly (hehe) I'm picking up a dozen (or so) Blue/black/splash silkie eggs to incubate in the Easter Hatch-a-long!!!

WooHoo, I'm surprised my family hasn't kicked me out into the coop yet! When the silkies get more feathered, I'm planning to move them outside (along with their heat lamp for awhile) into another contraption I built. It started out as a huge doghouse that I kept the meat chickens in until we butchered them. Then, I converted it into a rabbit hutch...but the rabbit turned into a house bunny that resides in the living room. So, I'm thinking it will make a perfect little coop for my silkies.

Are any of you doing the Easter Hatch this Saturday?

I'm gonna have to put mine in at midnight 'cuz we won't be home on Saturday!

Don't tell on me!

 

[CALI CHICK]

I LOVE THAT!!!!! You are one lucky chick. Would you ever consider sending me hatching eggs from her if I paid all the expenses? I hope I'm not being pushy!!!! She has pretty silkies.
Yes, I'm marking air cells too. And I have a broody that is one week ahead of me so I'm using her egg to compare my air cells to. I had a test egg, buy my little artist daughter picked it up yesterday and drew all over it and squiggled along the lines that were the week 1 and 2 cells. I have to have my DH make me a new test egg today. I am going to drill it out and put it somewhere safe to use as future reference. When I get it done, I will take pictures of it and some measurements and post for you too in case it will help.

WWC-She might sell eggs on the auction once in a while...I will ask her tomorow. Her main business is selling them as straight run chicks. You can check out her website: http://californiacountryranch.blogspot.com/p/silkie-chicks-all-ages-show-and-pet.html If she doesn't ship them, I could either mail them to you ($15 priority) OR bring them on the airplane this June (possibly).

Oh, I wanted to mention that I have ONE chick that has pasty butt -like Miss Pretty.

Actually, it's worse! He's had it so long that he has a completely bald, black boody! When I peek in the brooder, he runs over to me as if to say, "Is it time to wipe and oil my butt"?

For some reason, it's always been roosters (the big eaters) that get pasty butt for me. None of my hens did...

Hmmmm?