The 4th Annual BYC Easter Hatch-a-long

[Happy Chooks]

Welcome to the 4th Annual BYC Easter Hatch-a-long!

This Annual Hatch-A-Long has become so popular, that we've decided to make it an "Official" BYC event.

Set Chicken eggs on Saturday, March 9th at Noon (whatever time zone you are in)

Other poultry breed setting dates listed below...

We want to hatch on March 30th, (the day BEFORE Easter Sunday)
button quail: 16 days to hatch; set March 14th
coturnix quail: 18 days to hatch; set March 12th
seramas: 19 days to hatch; set March 11th
other bantam and LF: 21 days to hatch; set March 9th
bobwhite quail: 23 days to hatch; set March 7th
call duck: 26 days to hatch; set March 4th
mallard (derived) duck,goose, turkey, guinea: 28 days to hatch; set March 2nd
goose: 28 to 32 days to hatch; set Feb 26th - March 2nd
muscovy duck: 35 days to hatch; set Feb 23rd
emu: approx. 53 days to hatch - set Feb 5th (for you "serious" hatchers)



Contests!

We will continue to update this section as contests begin.


Contest #1: Guess the total amount of eggs that will be set! Winner animalsroc4evr
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...-guess-how-many-eggs-are-going-to-be-set/0_50

Contest #2: Short Story Contest on Why You Love Hatching. Winner Pele
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/745339/2013-easter-hatch-a-long-short-story-contest/0_50

Contest #3: Opportune Time - The dates/times have been chosen and we'll announce winners as they occur.
Prize: One Year GFM for each of the 3 winners
Winner #1 - Joyful Promise
Winner #2 - Tammy N and LFchixranch
Winner #3 - ceocka


Contest #4: Cutest Baby Fowl Picture Winner - QuirkySue
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...-long-contest-4-cutest-baby-fowl-picture/0_50

Contest #5: Caption Contest To enter, see here:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...h-a-long-contest-5-photo-caption-contest/0_50
1st Place Winner - AccidentalFarm
2nd Place Winner - Je33ieg
3rd Place Winner - wolftracks

Contest #6: Broodies and Their Babies Winner - Contrastphoto
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...long-contest-6-broodies-and-their-babies/0_50

Contest #7: Natural Egg Photo Contest
1st Place Winner - JoyfulPromise
2nd Place Winner - johnnyg07
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...long-contest-7-natural-egg-photo-contest/0_50

Contest #8: Flapper Contest
1st Place Winner - Contrastphoto
2nd Place Winner - fishnet1971
3rd Place Winner - chickenlisa
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/752768/2013-easter-hatch-a-long-contest-8-flapper-contest/0_50

Contest #9: Candid Picture Contest Winner - Hurley
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...-a-long-contest-9-candid-picture-contest/0_50

Contest #10: UK Members ONLY Contest
1st Place Winner - LONDON HENS
2nd Place Winner - leannybabe
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...-long-contest-10-uk-members-only-contest/0_50

Contest #11: Guess How Many Eggs Will Hatch Winner - ChooksChick
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...ontest-11-guess-how-many-eggs-will-hatch/0_50

Contest #12: Cutest Easter Chick/s Contest Winner - soldier
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...contest-12-cutest-easter-chick-s-contest/0_50

gryeyes Chicken Tiara Contest: To enter, see here:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...ch-a-long-create-a-chicken-tiara-contest/0_50

Random Funny Posting Contest: Now Closed. A variety of prizes!
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...dom-funny-posting-contest-saturday-march-23rd


Upcoming Contests - More details to follow:

Best Hatch Participant - Winner - gardeningmama
Best Hatch Rate - 12 month GFM Prize - Winner - Daniel1974
Worst Hatch Rate- 12 month GFM Prize - Winner - JoyfulPromise



Thanks for joining and Happy Hatching Everyone!

Here is a list of all of our peeps that have signed up to hatch eggs. To sign up for the hatch, just post in the thread that you would like to hatch. We'll be updating this list manually, so please be patient if you don't see it updated immediately:


Looking to swap eggs? See here:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/743738/easter-hatch-online-hatching-egg-swap/0_50

 

[ozexpat]

I will be in the midst of a chicken run to the Philippines over Easter and will be setting 150 or so eggs there on Easter Saturday as part of my Getting the Flock Out of Here adventure..

 

[ChooksChick]

Good morning, everyone!

Today's tip:

When candling early or candling dark eggs (like many excited participants will be doing) you can use a bright flashlight with a strip of foil wrapped around the beam, with black electrical tape on the outside. This helps keep the greatest amount of light inside, thus flowing through the egg. This also allows the collar to shape to the egg, which prevents that crack of light where most flashlights meet the egg- this crack of light keeps us from seeing as well as we otherwise might because our eyes can't fully dilate.

One more thing- our best vision is actually our peripheral sight, and thus if you look an inch or so to one side when you cant be sure you're seeing movement, you can actually tell whether there's movement a lot better!

Happy hatching, everyone! Off to the muddy mess that my breedery has become!!

 

[Time-Out]

Hatch Day - 4


Here's something hatch-related.

Why are eggs the shape they are?


First of all, what is the shape of a chicken egg? It's not round or spherical, like some reptile eggs. It's not oval either. It's an asymmetrical mix of oval and tapered, with one end bigger than the other — yup, chicken eggs are an 'asymmetric tapered oval'.

The ovoid shape gives an egg its incredible strength. You can see this amazing power first-hand with a simple experiment.
First, remove any rings on your fingers and slip on a rubber glove. Then wrap your fingers around an egg and squeeze really, really hard while trying to apply equal pressure to all sides of the egg. If this demonstration is done correctly, even Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn't crack it. Why? Because of something the egg has in common with famous works of architecture like the Pantheon in Rome, Italy. This monument has survived for nearly 2,000 years because it's shaped like a three-dimensional arch, a domed, egg-like shape that's one of the strongest architectural designs in the world. When an object is placed on top of it, no single point in the dome supports the entire weight; instead, the object's heaviness is carried down along the curved walls to the dome's wide base. This, of course, works best when you apply similar pressure to all sides of the dome. If your egg breaks, it's most likely because one of your fingers applied greater pressure to the shell than the others. 


If eggs were rectangular little boxes, they would be very strong on the corners, but very weak in the middle of the straight walls. (They would also be extremely uncomfortable for the chicken to lay.) Sharp edges can act as stress concentrators. It is at these points that structures are most likely to fail. It’s why you can usually rip a piece of paper in half fairly cleanly. Once you have a small tear in it, the stress will be concentrated at the tip of the tear, and the tear will propagate forward. It’s the same reason why a small crack in your car windscreen can easily turn into a larger crack - the stress is concentrated at the ends of the cracks.
Round things such as eggs obviously don’t have sharp points to them and therefore it is much harder to get a crack formed in the first place. Also, the shape ensures the shell is strong in compression (squashing) but weaker in tension (stretching). External forces are likely to squash it, whereas internal forces (the chick trying to get out) will stretch it, and it breaks more easily.The strongest shape of all is a ball, or sphere. But if you were to push or gently nudge a spherical egg, it would roll away downhill, never to be seen again.

So, one reason that eggs have an asymmetric tapered oval shape is that if you nudge them, they'll come back to you. They'll sweep out a circle around the pointed end, and come to a stop with the pointed end facing uphill. In fact, the eggs of birds that have their nests on cliffs are more oval than the eggs of birds that nest on the ground. This means the 'more-oval' eggs of these cliff-nesting birds will roll in a very tight little circle, and be less likely to roll out of the nest — and off the cliff.

Another reason for eggs to be egg-shaped is that they fit together quite snugly in the nest, with only small air spaces between them. This means the eggs radiate their heat onto each other, and keep each other warm. And of course, you can fit more eggs into the nest.

Yet another reason that eggs are tapered is so that they can get pushed out of the hen. It sounds intuitively wrong and extremely uncomfortable, but eggs are laid with the blunt end coming out first, followed by the tapered end. In fact, the physics of pushing-an-egg-out tells us that eggs have to come out blunt end first.
It can be explained with an example. If you've eaten cherries, you'll have come across the pip or stone inside the cherry. That pip is tapered on each end. Think how easy it is to squeeze a tapered cherry pip between your fingers, and squirt it a metre or two. At the other extreme of things, think how hard it would be to squirt rectangular dice anywhere, if you just squeeze them between your fingers. It would be impossible.
Getting back to the chicken egg, the end of the chicken egg that tapers to a point has the ideal shape for the muscles of the hen's vagina to push on - and out. The hen's vagina has the basic shape of a tube. As the muscles squeeze upon the egg, they find more surface area to act on at the tapered end - as compared to the blunt end. And so the tapered end retreats from the contracting muscles, pushing the egg (blunt end first) into the outside world.

 

[mstricer]

Please send her your heartfelt thoughts
https://www.facebook.com/LesFarmsCanada

 

[delisha]

Thought I would post a few picks of the variety of colors I get from the Muscoveys

This is my breeding stock

These are feed out chicks from my stock ..the chicks feather fast because I do not heat as hot as other do..these chicks are a few days old.

This is a young cockerel my DH liked and wanted me to keep..I still have him but he is a cull..He is huge for his age, just lacking in chest.

More scovy pics and a few baby ducks

This is a really old chicken..she was laying regular at the age of 7. I hated to cull her but at her age I did not want her to fall ill. She was giving up feathering after molt to continue to lay..

These were her last chicks. I kept one.

This is the grand daddy of them all..He was a big bird..I have a picture of him later in this group
..
This field is planted with Oregano, spinach, kale, squash, and pumpkin for the birds..it looks like this in late fall..they live in this field.

Grandaddy..that is a cake pan..he weighed over 12 lbs after butcher. and was delicious at his advanced age. I slow roasted him just like a turkey.

 

[CayuseRanch]

4-H chicken mom
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Hey Guys! I am such a numbers person.We did beat last years record. We had 278 participants! Yay US! But only 148 have # of eggs set...so I copied the list of who needs their numbers in. Thought I would post them as a reminder.

 

[ChooksChick]

Quote: Heh. Yeah, after fawning over my hubby for 20 years, 4 months, 13 days, my Christmas present to him was to stop hatching for awhile after the Christmas hatch. This ended my little break (had been going for nearly 3 years) and a couple of days ago he shows up with not ONE, but TWO brooders. One is a big stand-alone pantry with space for 3 levels and a drawer for storing stuff, and the other is a 4' x 4' crate I'm going to divide into two levels on its side, so two 2' x 4' levels. I'll need to order a couple more brooder heaters...but otherwise this is instant capacity!!!

I'm soooooooooo luck to have this fellow...

I went to chick days today.
The lady asked me how many I wanted, I said 4 of each (polish and bantam asst.).

she went to write it down and said, 'wait, how many of each?' 6 of each!
she wrote that down for polish. Then she said, how many for the bantams? 8! I only meant to get 8 in all, but i walked out with 14.

everytime she asked.. i raised my answer. HAHA!!
at the end it was like, you know what? Let me just take them all home

Good luck...you're destined to end up a chicken physicist like me! I can bend space and time and end up with more chickens!

update on my broody - she did great - 5 out of 7 hatched! i did the float test on the last two. Not sure what happened to them... they looked fully developed, but didnt make it all the way to the end for some reasoon... Anyway - here are the 5 that hatched... super cute!







OHHHH and BTW - In all of the posts I have read about broodies sitting on eggs and them not moving and such NO ONE NO WHERE posted how after they finally hatch - they do thier "business" that they have been holding onto for (what looks like ) 21 days!!

HAHA - i took the biggest poop out of her box I have ever seen.

I thought it was another chick at first!!!!!

Today's hint:

Broodies will generally get up off of the nest once or twice daily to eliminate away from the nest so they don't soil their eggs. Not all hens do this, so if your girl is too focused, it's a good idea to pick her up, go at least 30' away from the nest and then put her down. She'll usually eliminate before she gets back there. This is also when they eat and drink. It's usually a race to pound the feed and water and get back to the nest.

What we call lockdown is the same time that the hen tends to stop getting up and going about her business. She sits patiently listening and feeling the little shells beneath her as they tap and chip away from inside. If you listen, she talks to them and encourages their progress, even tapping a bit to cheer them on. All the while, she's holding IT in...waiting until they all hatch, when she can finally make the grossest deposit of all...

So: lesson is not to leave a broody alone in your mudroom in a covered litter box with her chicks while you go grocery shopping.

 

[Jucknath]

Here is the cheap candler that I made similiar to what my dad made 50+ years ago.
The red lid is a coffee-mate lid as it fits tighter. I cut the hole out smaller than I want and then wet an eating egg to flare it larger. When the hole is too large, just cut cardboard to fit over it. Last pic it is ready for storage. We candled 5 eggs twice and are doing all 46 tonight.

 

[ozexpat]

Well... I just pulled 19 of my 25 eggs... And of the 6 left in there, I think only 3 are viable. The others I left just hoping... I'm sure they are dead, just not totally clear like the others. Of the 3 that are still trying, 2 are my own barnyard mixes that I'm hathcing for a friend... I hope they hatch. She wants to start her own little flock and surprise her little boy with chicks on Easter Sunday... The other one is a silkie, the only one out of 8 silkie eggs from the Easter swap. Two of the doubltful ones I left in are serama eggs, but I'm sure they aren't going to make it... I was really hoping for the seramas... Disappointing to say the least.

On a brighter note, I set 10 Ameracauna eggs today and am expecting another shipment of eggs today and a couple more next week.. Including duck eggs!!!

My oldest son made me give him a solid number of how many chickens we now have...
Here's my chicken math...

We started with 12 layers. I wanted to double the size of my flock. We got a rooster, but then gave him away because he became aggressive, but not before he had fertilized a few eggs. The plan was to keep 3 roosters + 24 hens... So... 27 total birds, right??

Original layers (+12) counted but reduce by 20% due to potential losses from disease illness or accident
First rooster (+1) not counted - roosters dont count
Hatched 7 chicks under a broody (+7) half are roosters and others are research and development
Gave rooster away (-1)
Hatched NYD chicks (+20) half are roosters and others are research and development
Hatched Spitzhauben crosses (+8) half are roosters and others are research and development
Hatched EE's and an OE from swapped eggs (+3) half are roosters and others are research and development

So... 12+1+7-1+20+8+3=27... or 50...

Depending on how you look at it!

But at least 10 of those are confirmed cockerels, so figure on keeping 3 of them, so take away 7 more... Hey... I have room to hatch more!!!

Good thing, cuz have more eggs in the bator and more on the way... (I need help...)

you have 9.6 chickens