I have not been on here for several days until now....I still have my fingers crossed for you a hatch. Are there any pips? Wish you lived closer so I could have been more help with your incubator.That is terrible! I don't know what I did wrong, but now we are on day 22 and nothing. We're gonna wait until Day 25, then it's an egg autopsy.
I am so happy your children are enjoying the chicks! It made our Christmas start a little early delivering them to you. You have such a beautiful family and Dennis and I love the Christmas card with all your children's pictures on it. Lydia was excited to see pictures of her friends too! I am glad it all worked out!I thought this would be a good place to post about our Chicken filled Christmas. A gift we got from a fellow BYC member, really upstaged all of our store bought gifts this year. We really lucked out when we wanted to get started with chickens by joining this board and getting to meet RedBugPoultry. Such a sweet lady with so much knowledge about chickens. She helped us get started with our Black Copper Marans and some hatching eggs for our incubator. Then, because I was nervous about the outcome of my hatch (today is D-Day and so far not a pip!) she offered me some day old chicks so the girls would have their long awaited chickies for Christmas. This sweet lady drove out on Christams Eve and gave us 14 chicks. A Dorking, some Dominiques, Delawares, 2 Blue Copper Marans, and some Black Copper Marans. She even sexed the Dominiques and Dorking to make sure we would get hens! Our brooder was set up temporarily in the living room for the girls to find on Christmas morning.
Everyone was so happy with our new babies! And the immediate questions came out "How do we know which ones are boys and which ones are girls?" So I explained how Heidi had been able to sex the dorkings and Dominiques at birth for us. I told them the rest would be a suprise. But my 11 year old Sophie, did some research on the internet about feather sexing. She used the following photo as a guide.
And so, she determined that we have 2 female Blue Copper Marans, 1 female and 1 male Delaware, 7 female Dominiques (Heidi had one she was unsure of, but Sophie concurs based on the feathering), 1 female Dorking, 3 male and 5 female Black Copper Marans. We banded the suspected boys and will be keeping track to see if this was an effective way to sex the chicks. I suspect she'll be off a bit because some of the chicks hatched a day or so before others, so they are at different stages of development, but it was fun to let her try. She will be using a control group with any chicks that hatch out of our incubator because we will know exactly how old each one is. This is now her proposed science fair project! If she's right, that is a lot of new hens for us! Either way, we are so thankful for RedBugPoultry's kindness. I hope you all had a great holiday with your chickens!
Amy, Thank you! I too value your friendship and so appreciate the help you have given me the past few years on my birds!You are very lucky to have met Heidi! She is a wonderful person and so knowledgeable! She was a great help to me with Guineas when no one local seemed to know anything. I have always valued her friendship!
That is terrible! I don't know what I did wrong, but now we are on day 22 and nothing. We're gonna wait until Day 25, then it's an egg autopsy.
