Starting a batch tomorrow 1/25 anyone want to join me? Valentine hatch-along!

[FromChictoChick]

I set a dozen eggs for a V-Day hatch! (I accidentally dropped unlucky number 13 on day 3)

In the bator: buff silkies, bbs silkies, 4 olive eggers, 1 wheaten/blue wheaten ameracauna and 1 bbs copper maran (all from BYCers!)

I'm not sure how I'm doing. I candled the silkies and I think I see development. .. couldn't see through the rest

I cracked a buff silkie egg pretty good tonight while turning... nothing leaked out so I tried the clear nail polish. .. hoping for the best! !

 

[Blingaling1]

Candled today 5 days in, from fellow BYC'er 7 of the 12 BLRW eggs are fertile at this point and the German Hampshire is as well, 2 out of my 3 EE eggs are as well. Things are looking nice.

 

[BirdWalkFarm]

I'll jump in too ! 1/25 about 10:30 am

Eight Lavender Americanas ( shipped )
Ten of my Americanas blue , lavender , black . Have no idea what colors I will get , never sat my own eggs .

I have a Brinsea Advance with auto turner and humidity pump , only used it once and really liked it .

Good luck everyone on their hatches !!!!

 

[McPhersonFarm]

I think I'm going to toss a couple of clears tonight. I've never done this so I'm kinda scared to but they are very obviously clear compared to the rest. Do you guys open your clears to see if they were fertile or what happened or just throw them away? How is everyone else doing? I'm excited about my first hatch. Also, when do you guys get your brooders ready?

 

[chevynova]

Hi all, I've got some shipped eggs to throw in for the V-Day hatch! They were set on 1/26, due 2/16, so they'll be a few days late.

Current tallies:
6 out of 13 standard Russian Orloff
9 out of 9 Yokohama (woohoo!)
3 out of 5 Ohiki
8 out of 14 Sizzle
2 out of 7 Blue Slate Turkey (set on 1/18, due 2/15)

I also have a batch of different eggs due this Sunday, and another due next Friday. I'll post pictures of those hatches for fun.

McPhersonFarm - For my first several hatches I did open the clears and any other eggs that did not hatch to see what happened, and found it very educational. Now I have my incubation and candling habits pretty settled and don't bother anymore. I usually get my brooders ready at lockdown (for me this is 4 days before hatch day) just in case of an early baby!

 

[McPhersonFarm]

Hi all, I've got some shipped eggs to throw in for the V-Day hatch! They were set on 1/26, due 2/16, so they'll be a few days late.

Current tallies:
6 out of 13 standard Russian Orloff
9 out of 9 Yokohama (woohoo!)
3 out of 5 Ohiki
8 out of 14 Sizzle
2 out of 7 Blue Slate Turkey (set on 1/18, due 2/15)

I also have a batch of different eggs due this Sunday, and another due next Friday. I'll post pictures of those hatches for fun.

McPhersonFarm - For my first several hatches I did open the clears and any other eggs that did not hatch to see what happened, and found it very educational. Now I have my incubation and candling habits pretty settled and don't bother anymore. I usually get my brooders ready at lockdown (for me this is 4 days before hatch day) just in case of an early baby!

Wow sounds like you have a bunch of babies coming! I was thinking of doing turkeys but haven't decided yet! I opened the two clears on the Rouen today and they were not fertilized. It looks like the rest are going good. What do you use for brooders?

 

[Blingaling1]

Quick 7 day update:

Shipped Eggs-
BLRW 11/12 Fertile
German Hampshire 1/1 Fertile

Own Flock-
EE 2/3 Fertile

Temps have been very stable even during the colder nights. How important are humidity fluctuations? Should they remain very constant or can it go up and down throughout the day alot?

 

[chevynova]

Wow sounds like you have a bunch of babies coming! I was thinking of doing turkeys but haven't decided yet! I opened the two clears on the Rouen today and they were not fertilized. It looks like the rest are going good. What do you use for brooders?

I could sing praises of turkeys all day. I currently have six, four of which I hatched myself. I never gave them any special treatment, but they decided I was BELOVED MOMMY, BRINGER OF GOOD THINGS as soon as they understood treats! They are gentle and friendly and will follow me around the woods as if I were a Disney princess. They are very needy for attention and cry if I don't visit when I go outside. Potential drawbacks are their large size, noisiness when upset (the males gobble and the females yelp in high pitch, similar to dogs), tendency to want to sleep in hard-to-reach places outside of their safe runs if you free range during the day, and they can be territorial. If you need to house adult turkeys with other birds, move the turkeys into the other birds' pen instead of the other way around. This way, they are guests in someone else's house and will behave a lot better. I also suggest not feeding them from your hand unless you want them constantly grabbing at your hands looking for treats when they grow up. I have a few girls who occasionally try their darndest to swallow my fingers. But all in all, they give me a lot of joy and a big ego boost to boot. Just a caution for your wallet - turkey eggs are expensive can be difficult to hatch. I tried three or four times in the beginning and ended up buying my first poults from a hatchery.

As for brooders, I use big plastic storage bins from Wal-mart and hang a heat lamp overhead. I also have a couple of Brinsea EcoGlow brooders, which are even better than a heat lamp, but a bit expensive. They are basically a ceramic heat plate on legs. They never get too hot and provide a "momma hen" for the chicks to sit under. I have had a few accidents in which the chicks piled too high underneath and accidentally crushed or suffocated the bottom chick. I got a second one so they will spread out more and have not had the problem since.

Temps have been very stable even during the colder nights. How important are humidity fluctuations? Should they remain very constant or can it go up and down throughout the day alot?

Consistency is preferred if you can manage but please don't stress over it. My incubators go between 16% and 20% humidity with no added water when the heat goes on and off in the house and my hatches do fine. During the last couple of days, I turn the temperature down a notch and add enough water to bring the humidity up as high as I can. This comes from the hatching tips on Porter's website, but modified for chickens.

 

[jakewelder]

Good info and story, don't know if im ready for turkeys yet, they may not stay home, and coyotes patrol the fringes

 

[DraigAthar]

Well, today is day 8! Candled and weighed again. Culled out the infertiles, three of 24 were not developing at all. Of the remaining 21, two have funny looking air sacs, not detached/floating but positioned off to the side. So I marked them and we'll see how that goes. The rest all look to be on track. So the tally is:

15 Dominiques
1 Australorp cross
2 Buff orp cross
3 Wyandotte cross

The ones that are crosses are hens that were under a cross-breed roo. The roo himself is half Dominique and half Buff Orp. When you plug him into the chicken calculator and cross him back on those three hens, all sorts of crazy stuff pops up as possible, haha. So we'll see what actually hatches. By the odds, the most likely outcomes are either barred or black, but some less frequent oddities may pop out. That's the fun part about cross breeds.