The 6th Annual BYC Easter Hatch-a-long!

[KYTinpusher]

Actually I meant what system for marking what eggs come from where? Which birds, crossed, pens, etc. and abbreviations.

Ohhh...

I use an abbreviation for the breed - SFH = Swedish Flower Hen, I-A = Isbar, group A, SH = Svart Hona, I x = Isbar project, JP = Joseph project, etc. If I want to mark from a specific bird, I write her name or description on it. Just whatever abbreviation makes sense to you, and then I mark the date laid. If I need to find out who in my coops is laying what, I use the food-color-in-the-vent method.

 

[birdman55]

How do folks mark their eggs? Just curious.

use a pencil not marker...toxins can absorb into the embyro using a marker

Actually I meant what system for marking what eggs come from where? Which birds, crossed, pens, etc. and abbreviations.

with pens just get a log book...right down your breeds...and assign each pen a number....then when you incubate...mark the pen number...that way you dont have to write anything else on it...simple enough...also when hatching you can get hardware cloth and separate each pen so when they hatch they are were you want them to be...just make sure to write in your log...this section is from this pen...and after that i would use zipties...different colors and which leg on what pen...have the pen 1 have the same area and same color and leg for that bird...that way it will make it easier on you....hope i helped

 

[Cynthia12]

so starting to hatch some chicken eggs...these were not included in the hatch along...

Nice! Have to ask, are those pink eggs from some EE's? Who lays those? Very pretty. Have a friend that is wanting a pink egg really bad, and I'm loving those Olive eggs!

 

[draye]

Actually I meant what system for marking what eggs come from where? Which birds, crossed, pens, etc. and abbreviations.

I mark all eggs with either breed or run by rooster. I just put them in the incubator until time to put them in the hatcher. If I want to separate I use the strawberry cartons ( the clear ones) and put them in by breed or run by rooster. After hatch I use the secure ties or wire ties and mark them by leg band color. You have to watch them close and change them out every thee to four days.

I have used non- toxic markers, but I peeper pencils ( No. 2).

 

[casportpony]

Quote:

Quote:
That article and picture are not from me, they're from here:
Source: http://www.avianaquamiser.com/archives/2011/09/


-Kathy

 

[Junibutt]

The weight loss goal for chickens by lockdown is around 13%, but the individual weight losses will vary. I look at the trend, as eggs who may be a little slow to drop weight at first can catch up. Mine drop between 2% and 4% each week. Based on their rate of moisture loss, I should expect them to be right around 12 - 14% by lockdown. My lowest first quarter number was 1.84%, while the highest was 4.57%. By the next quarter, they were 4.6% and 8.0%, and neither represented the second quarter low or high (which were 4.5% and 8.1%, respectively). I look at averages. My first quarter average loss was 2.58%. My second quarter was 5.58%. On that trajectory, by the 4th quarter I should be at 12% average loss, which is slightly low, so I am running my humidity about 5% lower than I did for the first half of incubation. Weights are great if you don't quite trust what your hygrometer tells you, and can give you a basic guideline for humidity adjustment during incubation. Every egg is different, some are more porous and some really hold onto moisture. Don't worry too much about individual eggs, and follow the group as a whole. You'll do fine!!

Thank you!

 

[Dcat]

Well, due to mostly clears and a few quitters I'm down to 52 with one or two more possible culls. Im crossing my fingers in the possible ones. Setting this many eggs is very different than setting my usual 6-10. On a more positive note all the ones I'm positive on are all wiggling and kicking up a storm! Woot!

 

[Junibutt]

Actually I meant what system for marking what eggs come from where? Which birds, crossed, pens, etc. and abbreviations.

Its only my second hatch in an incubator but since I set 78 eggs, it was important to come up with a methodology. For the homegrown eggs, I am using an alphabet for the breed and then the date it was collected. If there were more than one egg of a breed I used an alphabet in the end as well. For example I collected 3 different Legbar eggs on March 13th
So my coding was L13A, L13B and L13C where L was for Legbar,13 for date and A,B,C for different Legbars or you can assign them to different pens.
For shipped eggs, I added an abbreviation for source in the beginning but since I don't know what dates they were collected, I just start from 1.
For example, I also had some Barnevelders shipped from two different sources.
Source H and Source T
Source H's eggs were marked HB1, HB2, HB3......
Source T's eggs were marked TB1, TB2, TB3.....

 

[LadyHawkeAvry]

How do folks mark their eggs? Just curious.

I use a pencil. Sharpies are a lot easier to read, but are also carcinogenic. One hospital I worked at actually marked them with carcinogen stickers for better OSHA compliance. I love sharpies, and buy them by the ton, but was concerned about using them on the shells of early developing embryos. It's obvious that it totally doesn't hurt them, and the chicks come out fine, but of course the first, and only time I marked eggs with a sharpie was my very first incubation ever, on a batch of shipped eggs, in a homemade incubator. The hatch was not awful as far as shipped eggs go, but the death rate, combined with the limb deformities I ended up with in the hatch freaked me out and I never went back. The hatch rate was simply standard shipped egg stuff, but the leg anomalies I could never explain, along with the deaths of a few chicks under a week old. It was my only experience like that, so I am afraid to go back to the sharpie, despite it likely not being the culprit at all. If I didn't have that one experience, I would be all over the sharpie, since pencil on colored eggs is torture for a middle aged presbyopic such as myself to read! In the meantime, a soft graphite pencil does the job just fine!

 

[tntchix]

I have wondered about sharpie vs pencil hatch rates myself. just curious really