Tatanka Breeders Club: Meat Quail project with history, discussion, pictures and videos

[yinepu]

EMU eggs... I have a friend who is always talking about EMU eggs...

these are my first.,. i have 16 in the incubators.. three have started to wiggle.. so hopefully out of 16 I get a few to hatch.. then it's a 2 year wait for them to lay their own.. assuming I get lucky enough to end up with at least male/female pair..

first one is due to hatch around the 29th of this month. The last is due to hatch April 4th.. so it's going to be a few more weeks of hand turning them.

 

[MobyQuail]

Well, Im off today, working oncall this next week and weekend.

cleaning out the pens, I said I was gonna stop with the camerascale. the big girls cant fly for nothing and always want to try and always take headers...I lost 2 white hens last hatchalong.

3 brown hen breeders hatched last may

341
350
368



4 split hens hatched 10.27 and 11.6

332
341
355
374

 

[MobyQuail]

these are my first.,. i have 16 in the incubators.. three have started to wiggle.. so hopefully out of 16 I get a few to hatch.. then it's a 2 year wait for them to lay their own.. assuming I get lucky enough to end up with at least male/female pair..

first one is due to hatch around the 29th of this month. The last is due to hatch April 4th.. so it's going to be a few more weeks of hand turning them.

I saw your page, how do you like that incubator? and I appreciate that you are weighing the eggs every week to check for weight loss, I read some of that emu hatchalong thread. good stuff.

 

[MobyQuail]

and rounding out my brown-colored birds, I have Midwest F4s that have just barely started laying, 5 hens all 300-310g right now.

some may recognize the feathering...

 

[yinepu]

I saw your page, how do you like that incubator? and I appreciate that you are weighing the eggs every week to check for weight loss, I read some of that emu hatchalong thread. good stuff.

I really like the Reptipro.. It gets insanely hot here in the summer.. last summer I had fans pointed at the Brinseas to try to keep them cool enough. I couldn't use the LG at all because of the heat.. even with it turned off it was still hitting around 115 to 120 degrees
the Reptipro will actually cool the eggs.. so no more worries about fried eggs in the bators!

I do need to update the page (probably tomorrow) with some more weights.. .. plus I have a few eggs that I am weighing every day just to keep a close eye on them.. (and I have another wiggler!)
I figured since there isn't much information on hatching emu eggs I may as well put plenty of info out there for the next person to use
I realize that every hatch is never the same for each and every person.. but at least this way they can see what happened to mine and hopefully it will help them when they try to hatch out theirs.

 

[MobyQuail]

this is a carton of jumbo eating eggs I was giving to my local chinese restaurant, good people, we trade sometimes.




the carton weighs 2 ounces, making the 30 eggs 15.25oz. I'm proud of these.

then I think, it would take 30 of our eatin' eggs to = one emu egg

 

[MobyQuail]

this is a Tatanka hatching egg



from the brown girls in the middle pen

 

[MobyQuail]

for those wondering where I got my passion...

buttercup & fatdaddy

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/423154/how-about-a-jumbo-co-op/300#post_6031088

and my Quail friends who have helped me, guided me, I wanted to write this up for them too.


and personally, I owe alot to my grandfather and grandmother who were pretty good dairy farmers in their day.

 

[MobyQuail]

and it looks like here is the exact start of the tatanka...

Just a update, 23 hatched so far, All brown.... Bill

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/423154/how-about-a-jumbo-co-op/270#post_5891730

I would also like to point out it seems Milleb is now a convert...and if that could happen, well I know a hot place was shopping for overcoats and mittens...

 

[MobyQuail]

and some of our charter words.

Oh and Fat Daddy I forgot to weigh Last Friday, but I won't forget this Friday Evening when mine are about 4 weeks old. But I am not going out there at 11PM to weigh them. Hope you tripled the size of their feed dish and are ready to do it again when they are 5 weeks old when the next bing eating begins. Oh yes, I use 4 different sizes of feeders for these girls. They are little pigs with wings. But you work a lot of overtime right? To pay for that GB Feed. Grow them Big As They Can Get - Fast.

#1 "Grow them Big As They Can Get - Fast."
#2 hatch only 14+ gram eggs
#3 cull all birds under 280 grams at 42 days.
repeat.

more to come...