Swedish Flower Hen Thread

[Knock Kneed Hen]

I was so depressed when I opened egg after egg to find perfectly formed chicks that just couldn't pip. I had left town and when I got home the humidity was at 40%. I opened the incubator to add water. That probably did them in. They were due to hatch already so I thought they needed the humidity, got it up to 60-65%. I was seriously bummed because I had eggs from a lovely hen that had been killed by a coyote in the incubator.

 

[KYTinpusher]

I was so depressed when I opened egg after egg to find perfectly formed chicks that just couldn't pip. I had left town and when I got home the humidity was at 40%. I opened the incubator to add water. That probably did them in. They were due to hatch already so I thought they needed the humidity, got it up to 60-65%. I was seriously bummed because I had eggs from a lovely hen that had been killed by a coyote in the incubator.

So sorry about your hatch.

This has been a bad year for many people trying to hatch SFH.

 

[redwood]

So is it a genetic problem or are they just difficult to hatch. I am on the verge of giving up on them.

 

[RedRidge]

Have any of you had problems hatching sfh chicks in an incubator. I have been hatching out black and blue copper marans with no issues but have yet to have any sfh chicks hatch. They've been at various stages of development when I open the eggs up. Any advice would be much appreciated!

I got 12 shipped eggs from BDG and 7 hatched... pretty good for shipped eggs.
My humidity was in the upper 30's the entire time until day 18... then I increased it to 70% for lockdown. They hatched unassisted.

For comparison... I did the same with Rhodebar eggs this year and got 7 out of 15 (all but one were cockerels of course).
Anyone want a Rhodebar cockerel? LOL

 

[ki4got]

So is it a genetic problem or are they just difficult to hatch. I am on the verge of giving up on them.

personally I don't think it's genetic, but more method than anything... shipped eggs need to be taken out of the equation since there's no way to tell what happened to them in the hands of the usps.

I've had experience hatching both local and shipped both, and for shipped, a lot depends on usps, but local (including some from 3 hours away) my hatches were pretty consistent. if they didn't quit before 14 days, then generally they all hatched, with a late quitter now and then but nothing out of the usual for any other breeds.

my hatching methods are pretty simple. I have 4 hovabators, 3 I use for incubating (with auto turners & fans) one for hatching only. I set the eggs, candle between 7 and 10 days, pull the clears, candle again around 19 days, pulling any quitters and moving them to the hatcher. the only time I handle the eggs is moving to the hatcher, where I hatch them upright in egg crates.

I also dry incubate, adding NO water until lockdown.

 

[ridinshotgun]

personally I don't think it's genetic, but more method than anything... shipped eggs need to be taken out of the equation since there's no way to tell what happened to them in the hands of the usps.

So we take out shipped eggs and find that dry methods of incubating work best.

I find that odd though since Sweden is not a dry country. Think English type rain since they are a mostly water surrounded country that benefits from the same ocean currents that England does. When I lived there we had rain at least once or twice a week, with even more in the Spring.

How many original stock animals were imported in by Greenfire? How many cockerels? Hens?

 

[Knock Kneed Hen]

Here are the two pullets I incubated. The black has more curled toes than the mf. I'm sure it's human error, but I still won't be keeping them.
I'm in San Diego if anyone is interested in pet quality SFH's.

 

[Bulldogma]

oh I should have mentioned... COCHIN... black mottled bantam cochin... but I've still got my blue mottled boy. I was referring to the teeny cochin chick, hoping it's mottled. and if it's a nice roo I wouldn't be disappointed...

this is the guy I lost...

this is the boy I have left...

Awww... so sorry - he was really pretty! Your little black cochin chick is doing well - it's so small in comparison to the other chick, but the white Silkie is taking good care of them.

The chicks that hatched this weekend were a little bit of a pleasant surprise to me - I hadn't expected all of them to hatch because my humidity had been between 40-50% during most of the incubation. With all the rain we have had lately, the humidity has been horrible. I even put rice in the incubator and it didn't help much. Some of the eggs looked like they had too much fluid in them when I put them in lockdown, so I didn't raise the humidity until the day before they were scheduled to hatch, and then only raised it to 60%, instead of 65% like I normally do. All 10 of the eggs that went into lockdown hatched!

No sticky chicks either and none needed to be helped.

Go figure.

Congrats on your hatch!

 

[tcmstalcup]

[/IMG]really bad pics of my babies from kytinpusher.

 

[tcmstalcup]