Set eggs April 3rd, who's with me!!??

[BroosterSpringsteen]

Yep, waiting till Wednesday to candle again.

I've been distracted building a new run on our coop all weekend. I need to reinforce the bottom edge before I move our 3 week olds out there next weekend. I took them into the big coop for a fieldtrip, and they squeezed under the bottom rail! I have no idea how. I've been meaning to add a hardware cloth skirt for months. I guess it's time to get digging.

Also, several of my 3 week olds are looking suspiciously rooster-y.

 

[SpiritedFarm]

I broke down and candled a couple of the americauna eggs last night (day 5) looking good!!

I will candle the whole lot (7 dozen) weds night.

Is the weather there good for digging right now? I would hate to have to be doing any digging here right now. Too cold. Had some decent weather over the weekend and I got the front of the house power washed (looked like Shrek sneezed on it).

Barn and coop clean up and improvements next week when hubby is on vacation!

I have 4 small runs need to be built, and an indoor 4-plex coop.

 

[SpiritedFarm]

oh,,,but before i can build the indoor coop, i have to move about 150 bales of straw!! lol

 

[BroosterSpringsteen]

You must have a decent size chunk of land!

We're having a very early spring here, close to a month ahead of schedule, although we did just have snow less than 2 weeks ago. This weekend was great for digging, because we're in the middle of spring rains. The ground was good and soft for setting posts. I did the digging. My boyfriend "supervised".

I get the shrek sneezing thing for sure. I'm still looking at a thick coating of puke green pollen on our porch.

I cheated and candled 1 Polish egg tonight. It's looking good!
Do you by any chance raise ducks? We live on the river, and I'm considering it.

 

[SpiritedFarm]

actually we only have a little over 2 acres, but we use it very effectively....4 horses, 4 dogs, 3 goats, 4 cats, 30 chickens, (100 in the bator) lol
Most of our guys are rescues.

No ducks though, I would want a pond and 3 of my dogs are 1/2 lab, well we know were that would go don't we?

Yeah, we are in the middle of our rains too, but I am only about 1/2 mile from Lake Erie, when the wind comes off the lake (90% of the time) it drops the temp a good 5 degrees. Add the rain and that gets me very cranky! lol

So we both snuck a candle and it looks good! Nice to hear your polish is growing!

 

[BroosterSpringsteen]

Your place sounds amazing. It's so cool that you've brought so many animals (and people into your family. I grew up on a farm, and we adopted every living thing that wondered onto our property in need of a home. Not just cats and dogs, but chickens, rabbits, injured birds, orphaned squirrels, etc.

So I candled last night, and it wasn't great. I pulled 7 more early quitters, including all but 1 of my polish eggs. Mostly what I have left are Marans. I'm pretty disappointed.

 

[SpiritedFarm]

Oh Brooster, sorry to hear about the candling.....how many did you start with?

Out of the 12 Orps I set, I have 8 left that look good, tossed the others. Dont want any stink bombs.

Not sure about my silkies, waiting for hubby to come home this weekend (he commutes) so we can candle them together before we lock down on saturday. The second batch needs candling as well, we will do them all together, need two set of hands to candle that many eggs!

Still considering trying some ducks?

 

[Frost Homestead]

Brooster, that stinks! I've heard a lot of people tossing a lot of polish eggs, I wonder if they're hard to hatch because of the breed? I've heard things like that about silkie eggs too, which is one of the reasons I haven't bid on any yet! I'm only getting about a 50% hatch rate anyway, so I don't want to end up with nothing...

I think I'm going to try to candle mine tonight when I get off work, we'll see how that goes, I'm going to try to use the weak flashlight and if that doesn't get through the shell then I swear I'm gonna rig something up or break down and buy a candling light.

 

[BroosterSpringsteen]

I have heard that about Polish eggs. It would make sense, since this is my 3rd attempt at hatching some! Fingers crossed for the one that's left.

I started with 28 eggs. I pulled 3 on day 7, and 7 on day 14. So now I have 18. Frosthazard, I have one of those inexpensive candlers from Incubator Warehouse, and I think it works really well.

Spirited, I imagine you would need help. It would take me forever to candle that many eggs!

 

[SpiritedFarm]

Well I ended up pulling a dozen last night, most of the silkies...whats up with that?

Brooster when do you lockdown? I lockdown tomorrow afternoon for the first phase of the hatch.

Tell me about the candler you have. I am using a flashlight and a toilet paper roll! LOL Doesn't work all that great.

Frosthazard, how did you candleing go? When do you lockdown?