Good luck with your current hatch and getting rid of the pests in the coop!
It's ok Chicken Hawk.Well,my muscovy hen is down to nine eggs now with baby's.
Good luck with your hatch.19 eggs made it into lock down, so they should start hatching sat. we will see!!!
now Maran dark eggs are they the ones that need extra humidity during lock down?
and for the record, I think ALL my hens have decided to go broody except 2,
Good luck!
Quote: I like ducks to, even with the mess.
Glad you got some healthy chicks. Looks like you are more than ready to set again!So okay I finally have 6 healthy chicks. 1 chick with curled toe paralysis. 2 DIS during hatching. One quitter was probably about day 18. So the FI was most consistent with heat and humidity. And the quietest. But the invcaview would have been fine except for the day I found the lid off. For prob 12 hrs. I think it caused them to be about a day later. But lookie what arrived today!
20 barnyard mixed,(Roosters are:Sumatra,Crele Orp,Langshan, mixed, Polish, Bantam welsummers
Hens: Welsummer, , Blue copper marans, cuckoo marans, EE and olive eggers, Bantam olive eggers, Langshan, games and mixes, polish, Ameracanu, ,Bantam welsummers,light Brahma, .Rhode island red, leghorn) from ebay packed very well. No damaged eggs.
7 isabell leghorn with possibility of split to brown leghorn, 7 ayam cemani thank you BYC member also packed very very well. 10 sizzle silkies ( one looks scrambled)from ebay that were packed horribly (6 not in the pic because they were shattered,16 total I paid for 12.) Going to give them a day or 2 to rest. Going to set them Saturday or sunday!!!!!!
I think you're on the right track with setting your own eggs. Good luck.My first HAL and experience w shipped eggs has been very frustrating and a disaster, to b honest. There were some great learning moments and successes tho. My first batch of the auction won maransut of 15 eggs I ended up w 6 pips. 5 in wrong end. One was in right place, and he had started zipping and I had to go to work. When I got home he had died in shell. One pip didnt start zipping at all and I waited 12 hrs to b sure he wouldnt get out on his own. I read sallys info on last resort helping and tried to follow her advice to the letter. With much patience, I ended up w a hatched chick who didnt look good at all. He laid there w occasional twitches but couldnt even hold his head up and rarely even opened his eyes. To my amazement, he survived the night and finally was up and running after about 24 hrs! He is about a week old now and doing great! With the high costs for the eggs n shipping, he has been named steve, my million dollar chick. Lol. I had also set 5 of my own eggs that I thought were from marilyn n elvis who r white silkies. Imagine my surprise when they came out and were obviously from my mille fleur bantams. I hve just recetly gotten back into chickens and all of these birds are all new. Out of 5 eggs, 1 was clear, and 3 hatched. Not too bad on those for my reentry at hatching.
The next batch up is in lockdown and due to hatch friday. Again mostly Shipped eggs. I do have 1 pip but the numbers already dont look good, as i have already thrown out over half due to clears, bloodrings, and stoppers. I have ayam cemanis, super blue egg layers (brown leghorn / creambars, silkies, chamois spitz. The silkies have been the most frustrating bc only 2 developed at all. The rest were clears. The only good about this batch is that I know I must b doing SOMETHING right bc out of the 4 duck eggs of my own that I set, all four are doing perfect and they will b due next friday. Will let u know how this all turns out but I am not holding my breath on the shipped eggs. Im not giving up so I started another batch of my own eggs. My guineas started laying so a few of those, 4 more duck eggs, 4 ameraucnas, 2 bantams, and 8 of my moms comets/kelso game roo. These comets are from her hen that lays eggs that are as big or bigger than my duck eggs and lay EVERY day without fail. Sorry this is so long. And lastly, I topped this all off by getting attacked by my new royal palm turkey tom a few days ago, lol. Roughed me up pretty good..story posted in turkey talk forum if u care to read..crazy, crazy, lol. So thats it..cross your fingers for me on shipped eggs that r left, plz..I wont b trying those again til I get better at hatching. Its been discouraging but also im encouraged by my rates w my own eggs.
@sally sunshine
Congratulations!
Cute!this week and last week
1 1/2 month old
more of the past 2 weeks yes there is 1 poult turkey there also
Awesome! I'm so glad the kids got some chicks! I know you put a lot of effort into making certain that they did!We had five chicks hatch total out of 7 in our classroom! 2 didn't make it. One was a little white silkie, and the rest were rocks! The kids are just thrilled. They are taking turns holding them, and just love them. The best part is watching them sneak over to the little blue chick cage, with a book about chickens, to read to the chicks! It is absolutely precious to watch them. My class is just going crazy with learning fun right now! The kids are having a ball! I have 4 eggs in another surprise incubator that could hatch today.They will love that!
Glad you caught the temp spike and handled it quick. That would have been a lot of eggs to loose. Good luck with your now staggered hatch!Update:
Candled quite a few of our eggs last night day 7
Still haven't counted all of them in the bator. Somewhere around 8 dozen... Yes I said 8 dozen. Never set eggs with fever lol
Day before yesterday I caught the bator up to 113 according to my previously calibrated thermo. You can imagine I freaked this incubator has always been very steady and good to me. I caught it very very quickly and removed the turner(since the incubator is so overfilled we've been turning the whole bator instead of running the turner.) Pulled all the eggs out to cool and placed then each in cartons. I then added a little water and put in the grate tetris-ing nearly all the eggs into one layer this time lower and farther from the heat source. My humidity had gotten down to the 20% mark and into the upper teens that's why I added some water.
The temps have been much more stable since doing this. I have also been able without the turner in to actually rotate the lid of the bator instead of moving the eggs around to try and get a more even natural heat.
Many more of the eggs looked good than I thought they would, I'm hoping to have a good hatch despite the temp spike.
Will probably candle again in a couple of days to pull more clears.
Also if you can believe it. While letting the eggs cool and still a a bronchitis and sinus infection stupor and still feverish. I decided to rotate eating eggs in the fridge which I hadn't cleaned them out and hard-boiled them for the chickens for a couple weeks due to being so sick. While doing this I found silkie eggs belonging to my ladies that went broody... And can you believe I added them to the incubator?! They're a week behind so I guess my hatch is staggered now lol some of them were pretty old so probably won't do anything but it would be nice if they did. We'll see.
That also mean I inadvertently joined the cinco de Mayo Hatch-a-long lol.
I didn't even know it until I looked at the calendar.
Also with the added eggs we're closer to 9 dozen.
Last chicken pic on my phone...
My 6 week old white sport legbar pullet from @Junaid 's pre-Easter test hatch. I'm still looking for the perfect name for her. But I just love her and think she's stunning and oh so sweet!
Good luck!Tonight I'll put our eggs in lockdown. I'm excited to take out the blocks that I've been using as makeshift turners, then I won't have to worry anymore about smooshing eggsThere is something in the lid of the bator that at a certain angle will bump into any propped up egg - I smashed a second one last night. It's just dented in the air cell portion, anyone ever hatched successfully after that? I'm going to candle today & check for life. I have some beeswax that I can melt and put over the broken areas...this is to prevent moisture loss and bacteria seepage right?
Anyways here's what I'm entering lockdown with:
approx. 9 Rhodebar/CCL , 3 Welsummer/CCL, 2 Blue Andalusian/CCL, 6 Dominique/Rhodebar OR CCL (one of these is the smooshed one though!)
Can't wait!
Seeing the rocking is really awesome! Good luck!
Locked them down last night.
I had to throw another sponge in there this morning to bring humidity up.
It's really awesome to see them rocking around!
I'm glad you're 2nd,3rd, and fourth hatch are doing better. How do so many people keep accidentally winning auctions around here?So far so good. After all the trouble early in April and completely loosing the first bunch of eggs... this second/third/fourth set is doing much better.
I may have three sets currently rotating through the incubators. LOL! Some how I managed to win an auction for 4.5 dozen(aka 54) Dominique eggs.With my first incubator acting up (finally working again) I set 18 Dominique eggs in the hatcher (manual rotation) until spaced opened up in the incubator. I gave away 17 of the eggs. There was another 19 eggs needing incubator space. So, DH got me another incubator with rotator. Now with all that space I set those 18 plus 4 duck eggs, 4 game bantams, 2 sexlink cross, and 3 Ancona/RIR cross. A few days in I set 7 quail eggs (they finally started laying, again).
My hatcher is going to be working overtime LockDown day:
First Lockdown day is Wednesday 4/20 (the RIR, bunch of mixed, and bantam eggs)
Second Lockdown day is Saturday 4/23 (first bunch of Dominique eggs)
Third Lockdown in Wednesday 4/27 (first set of duck eggs and second set of Dominique and quail eggs)
Forth Lockdown in Wednesday 5/4 (second set of duck eggs)
Awesome, mrleeroy!Sorry chaos. Looks like I put my update in the wrong thread.
I candled the shipped eggs last night, and all had movement inside but 1, and it did have veining. Day 7 for them. The newer group of eggs are still riding the turner, waiting to be candled Monday evening.
Happy Hatching!
Good luck!
Seeing the rocking is really awesome! Good luck!
I'm glad you're 2nd,3rd, and fourth hatch are doing better. How do so many people keep accidentally winning auctions around here?
Thanks for the update. I'm sure Sally appreciates the update on the other thread as well.Sorry chaos. Looks like I put my update in the wrong thread.
I candled the shipped eggs last night, and all had movement inside but 1, and it did have veining. Day 7 for them. The newer group of eggs are still riding the turner, waiting to be candled Monday evening.
Happy Hatching!
Thanks Mike. Anything to report on the Icelandics?
Anything to report on the broody?
Thanks Sally!The last pic I took of them. They love my shoelaces!
My daughter holding one of the serama chicks.
MOOOOOOOSERSSSSSThis is the last pic I took with a chicken in it, does that count?
OMG she is so adorable!!!!!!!!! oh the chick too but she is so cute!!!!My Daughter holding yesterdays Chick - Earl-y
Bunny a boy?Last pic was of Bunny
How pretty!!! I had to enlarge to see but well worth the time my dumb internet took!!! very healthy looking too!!speedy visiting me on the porch the other day
What a pretty bunch!!!Last photos I took of the chickens was a fight sequence between the 2 month old cockerels. These two started it.
The sexlink cockerel tries to break it up.
But they didn't stop until Miss Tweety Bird came over and pecked them all soundly.
oh how lovely!!!!!!!This is the last photo I took of my chickens. It was yesterday. It was their first time on grass. The larger ones are 7 week old Queen Silvia's. The smaller ones are 5 week old Queen Silvia's. They transform from dark brown chicks into these beautiful black and cream birds. A wonder to behold!
HEY!!!! The great defender himself?[COLOR=B42000][/COLOR]
awwwwwwwBlooie gifted me her svart hona egg prize from the Easter food contest.The breeder who donated them's hen went broody so they weren't able to send them yet. Since I'm new to hatching I've been thinking of getting some cheapo hatching eggs on eBay to practice and to test the incubator so I don't wreck the fancy eggs. I'll see how that goes. I think the incubator is ready but I'm also still trying to figure if it'll be worth it to buy or make an egg turner.
awesome!!! love the coop too!!Last picture of my chicken I took. My broody hen and my finger. LOL! The new part of chicken house with make shift broody boxes to make her feel at home.
Here's the outside. Needs steps/porch, roof, trim, paint, laying boxes, pulley to open pop door. etc. Old section will get paint and new trim as well.
Thanks Mike!Looks really good!
