She said/He said Who's right? Who's wrong? No one!

[sideWing]

Don't ever trust bator gages w/out checking and never trust manuals to correctly tell you how to incubate. That's my theory.

Beutiful coloring, but that "cyst" is really weird.


Yay on the hatchers!!! Boo on Blobby. He better make it out. I'll be so dissapointed.

I aim for 30% but I don't worry about it unless it drops below 25%.

I think incubator differences really matter. I had a girl trying to get the humidity up in her home made cooler bator to 75% like I run. (Her hygrometer had been checked.) She got it there, but when she posted the pic of the bator it looked like a rainforest in there...lol. It really showed the difference in bators. I run up to and past 80% with no condensation. I know, thanks to WV that the low humidity method does work outside of styro bators, and even the 40-45% is still low humidity (in comparison with the old standard of 50-60%).

Yuck on the staggered hatches...yay on the red team!!

I'm incubating at 50% humidity this time around due to the info I got on the high altitude hatch thread. Air cells are looking just fine at day 11.

I lucked out on lumber. I have a local business that gives away scrap that is perfect for coops and pens. I shoot for at least 10sqft/bird in the pens, and 2.5/bird in the coops, but really my coops have much more room than that. I built them to handle larger flocks if I want. I have 6-7 hens/rooster with a very high fertility rate. My goal this year is to get 10-12 girls /rooster. The polish rooster is wearing his girls out, and the cuckoo marans girls are starting to look a little beat up, too. I have 7 cuckoo marans hens, at about 97% fertility, and those 7 girls lay 5-6 fertile eggs every day in the summer. 6 polish hens lay 3-4 eggs. The bantams are pretty prolific layers, but also go broody if the wind changes direction, so I lose some of their production a good bit. My cuckoo marans are also starting to brood, and so far I'm letting them hatch in the pens, but my egg production suffers for a few months, so next year I may start breaking them. Since they are the big sellers, I need them to lay and let me do the incubating.

So 100sqft for 10 birds? I think I can double that and still have plenty of room.

 

[scflock]

Amy!!! Get back to the "Worried" thread. That guy has a seriously dried membrane, and I don't know what to say to help him

 

[AmyLynn2374]

There is a bird in that mop? Seriously, though, she is very pretty.

I only had one Polish chicken, a white crested black, and he was a vicious little devil.

I see pine cone, not mop...lol

Yeah I love the look of Polish but have heard the horror stories. I don't deal with aggressive poultry for long. That's why I have Pilgrim geese lol The least aggressive geese in the world and loved the Brahmas they were such sweet chickens

My polish is a sweet heart. I love her.

Agreed... but Brrrrrr.... I'd freeze to death in your house!! Mine is 75.

xs 2

I promise not to touch the incubator*



*Unless it's for candling and general meddling!

Amy!!! Get back to the "Worried" thread. That guy has a seriously dried membrane, and I don't know what to say to help him

Tell em to help it.....I'm going...

 

[scflock]

I'm incubating at 50% humidity this time around due to the info I got on the high altitude hatch thread. Air cells are looking just fine at day 11.

So 100sqft for 10 birds? I think I can double that and still have plenty of room.

Yeah, I actually have more than that per bird, but I wanted that to be the minimum if I went to 12 hens/roo. I have a lot of room to work with, too, so since I can't free range, I try to give them as much room as possible. They get plenty of veggies and sod in the summer, and I plant greens in the winter. Here's a pic I took yesterday of my cuckoo mama showing her babies a cucumber

 

[NTBugtraq]

My remaining 3 Stooges now all know how to drink water

but they still won't eat. They constantly peck at the coarse wood chips in the main tray (there are 3 trays in the brooder). So I took someone's (sorry) advice and covered the tray with paper towels, and put everything back where it was (including my 4th near dead chick). Now the 3 Stooges sit on the wall of the tray and will have nothing to do with any tray floor...the food is chick starter in water for 48 hours. I just replaced it with fresh.

 

[sideWing]

Sorry to be flooding this thread but I just had to share some more pics of my little fluff balls lol

So stinkin cute!

You should look through my coop pages..... I highly recommend scrounging through the dump, asking builders for left over scraps, and picking up pallets.

Also, the free pages on Facebook and Craig's list can bring you some lovely things.

I had my Marans rooster with 6 hens... And his fertility was around 75 to 80 percent... On a good day

I had my Ameraucana rooster with one hen.... And I still had about 75% fertility! My Dominique rooster though can cover almost every single egg, and he is over about 20 hens.

Ditto with my Leghorn rooster, rare to get an infertile egg with either one of those stellar boys.

when I don't have snow and frozen water problems.. I can separate lots of different breeding groups... In the winter though, I try to keep them together as much as possible, with at least 8 square feet per bird of covered space.

I didn't think about the free listings. Great idea! I'm planning to let them stay together when it's cold here too. Not as bad as where you are, but no sense keeping them separate.

Mmmmm, pallets...
That's what led me to discovering free lumber, my wife looking at pallet furniture on Pinterest. I've got a few really cool things that have been built out of pallets

I will check!

We are 5 no more, cause now we are 4.
1 more is as near dead as living can be, but as for the others, they will soon be 3.
Once death has finished passing this fragile door, I'll chalk it up experience and pine no more.
As for the remaining 3, they're bouncing and chirping and full of glee.
The bator fan drones on like a fan over an oven, as a new set of 41 gets ready to be chicken.
And as I sit here and, for the last time, ponder why...I am so glad I bought a new bottle of rye.

Sorry about the losses man.

 

[Alaskan]

We are 5 no more, cause now we are 4.
1 more is as near dead as living can be, but as for the others, they will soon be 3.
Once death has finished passing this fragile door, I'll chalk it up experience and pine no more.
As for the remaining 3, they're bouncing and chirping and full of glee.
The bator fan drones on like a fan over an oven, as a new set of 41 gets ready to be chicken.
And as I sit here and, for the last time, ponder why...I am so glad I bought a new bottle of rye.

Have you hand fed those disobedient chicks?

I find nicely warm, peanut butter watered down to a thick oatmeal works well.

 

[Alaskan]

When I hatch idiots, I lighly tap them on the had if they try to eat the wood chips... And I peck at the chick crumbles.... And pick some up and drop them... So that they bounce.


However, if they are overly hungry, try the panut butter trick I mentioned.... Because they will totally get too hungry to eat anything.

 

[Alaskan]

It has to be wam... Since their systems are shutting down... And at first you need to pry their stupid beaks open and wedge some in there.

I use a tooth pick.

 

[NTBugtraq]

Have you hand fed those disobedient chicks?

I find nicely warm, peanut butter watered down to a thick oatmeal works well.

They're eggs or meat, neither needs peanut butter or oatmeal. I am fine with putting electrolytes in the water for the 1st 3 days, still a little unsure about using medicated feed, but if I have to spoon feed them, burb them, or move their wings up and down...I draw the line. Remember, these will be the mothers of my future flock. I think perhaps they are all brain damaged by my stress test.