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Setting eggs on New Years Day

Nice, Good for you.
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Are they Wyandottes as well ?
 


Our baby hatched around 6:45 this morning :) This is our first year with chickens, and when Ms. Greenbow here decided back in December that she was gonna set, after 2 weeks of trying to change her mind I finally gave in. New Year's Day, I gave her 4 eggs to hatch, but didn't know other hens would go in on top of her. A week later, noticed she had 13! I got her down to 10, then we accidentally broke one a week ago when we were moving her to a hutch, but it was empty anyway. I finally had the guts to candle them last night ( I know, about 2 weeks late) and left her with 5, but today I'm thinking I was wrong about the others. One other partially hatched, but it was dead when we found it, not sure why. This one had it's beak out, and husband insisted we finish hatching it - he'd already peeled most of the shell off the membrane :( I had him get some hot water and a rag, and held it under the heat lamp, moistening the dried out membrane to loosen it and get it off. Once free of the exposed membrane, it started kicking and fighting, flopping out of its shell. there was the tiniest little bit of tissue connecting its belly to the shell, but we couldn't put it back under the mama like that, and it was fighting the shell, so we pinched it off and broke the shell down to leave just that spot attached before I patted it with a dry towel and tucked it back under broody mama. Baby wasn't bleeding or acting funny, pretty strong. We checked in around noon and it was all fluffy, dry, and that shell was gone, leaving a little pink-red belly button. It had no trouble digging itself back under its mama! Gads. Hope I've convinced hubs that we don't.touch.the.shell.
 
I set 10 BBS Cochin eggs and 6 mutt eggs from my birds 1/1/12 at around 9 or 10 PM. Only one Cochin egg proved to be developing... But I didn't know about resting shipped eggs for 24-48 hours after they arrived, and it was cold, so I'm not too bummed! Plus the shipper agreed to ship me more if I help with shipping, so I've got a second chance!

Anyways, all of the 6 eggs from my birds are developing healthily (no surprise, I have 3 roosters and 4 hens in there!). So, at lockdown, I had only 7 eggs, but they all looked healthy! This morning, I heard a little peeping as I was getting dressed, and sure enough, at around 11 AM, one egg was pipped! At around 12, another one pipped too.

I'm writing this from my local coffee shop... I had to leave the house for errands, and also to keep me from opening the bator and messing with things, as I always do! Here's hoping there'll be some fuzzy little butts in there when I get home......
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Little fuzz-butt is growing so fast! He/she is so much stronger than the chicks we got from the hatchery last year. As soon as food was put out, it started eating like crazy, same with water, and when it was done, just dove back under mama to go to sleep. I just can't get over how much faster this chick is developing and learning as compared to our first chicks - makes me want to only hatch my own!
 
These are the results of my first time incubation.
I set 10 eggs. There was 100% fertility and 40% hatched.


Looks like one quit around day 13. Five quit on day 18.
I culled one because it had badly curled toes on one foot.


My records show that I candled on day 13 and I removed
the eggs from the turner on day 18.
I though I was being very gentle each and every time I handled them.


Here’s a photo of the remaining chicks.
They’re the barnyard mixed variety.
Silver Laced Wyandotte mama~~Delaware papa


 

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