The 7th Annual BYC Easter Hatch-A-Long!

Psst....chickens love to be dried with hair dryers....
You made her day LOL she is doing great I just brought her out with her flock and they ran to me to great her, it was sooo cute.... I do think she told them how warm it was inside though because they followed me back to the house and they have never done that before LOL
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You made her day LOL she is doing great I just brought her out with her flock and they ran to me to great her, it was sooo cute.... I do think she told them how warm it was inside though because they followed me back to the house and they have never done that before LOL
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That is great news!
 
You made her day LOL she is doing great I just brought her out with her flock and they ran to me to great her, it was sooo cute.... I do think she told them how warm it was inside though because they followed me back to the house and they have never done that before LOL :th


Oh no... Looks like the cats out of the bag. They will start coming up with ways to get inside now
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Ok i'll give them a few days but don't want anything exploding in my bator. lol

Ok. Unless they are blood rings or start to smell I would hold off tossing until day 17-18.... That's when I make my final cull of eggs and it's saved me more times than once with an egg.
Ok so after a few hours she wouldn't go back to the nest so i confiscated the rest of the eggs. How NASTY ! There were 4 way down under everything else and i could tell by the smell it wasn't gonna be good. Those 4 i threw toward the field. Of course one of the bad ones fell at my feet and broke
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Brought the rest in and candled, one more was smelling nasty, had about 4 clear, so i have 2 that look promising and 2 i'm just not sure about. That makes 4 ???? The problem is, with them all having set on top of the nasty ones they all have an odor. SO ! I put ? on a couple that i will candle again tomorrow and put them way to one side of my bator, away from the ones i have in there. The others i will candle and if any movement i will keep. So
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hoping nothing explodes on me.

Yeah, it can be tough when a hen is having trouble with her eggs. I've found that most eggs don't explode in the incubator, some don't even go green. If you candle them and see that they are sloshing around that means they are rotten and may burst, any others probably won't even smell. It means those that do are scary.
We have had an egg explode on us before. No fun.

Best of luck!

I'm thinking that I should just pull all of the eggs my girls have layed. I know they're broody and want to raise a clutch. But it's too cold. They're not sitting yet because they're not done laying. The embryos will all be dead before they actually get to setting.
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But the good thing is that they're ready. As it warms up,whenever that is,I know that I've got some girls that are interested! Until then,I'll just love on y'all's babies!!!!

God bless,Glory

If you put the eggs in your basement they could last a week or so in the cool. I mark my eggs that I save with dates (in pencil) and toss the oldest ones whenever I add new ones.


My grand daughter cam in from collecting eggs and says "we got a big one".
Upon closer inspection i discover it's a flowerbed stone.
She said April Fool !
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She's a nut.

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Its better then some things you can collect while out in the barn. Reaching into a dark nest is really, really scary. Especially when there are skunks around.

Yes, I did about three and a half years ago. I had 10 and had them under the Ecoglow 20. They did great. It was in July and they feathered quickly. I kept a small cardboard box in their crate after I removed the plate-one small side cut completely off and one half of the long side of the box cut out. They liked to get in the box whenever anyone came up to the crate....I think they felt safe in there....don't know if that had anything to do with the brooder plate or not. I don't have any pictures....except this one on my granddaughter looking at them after they moved outside. You can see the cardboard box in the lower left but it doesn't show the openings.



Adorable picture!


Ugh I don't think I will have anything to hatch for the hatch along... I will try, but I don't know if it will happen. The Icelandic chickens aren't laying so she won't be able to send me some til Atleast e me of March, and the only thing I will have are showgirls, which isn't bad, but not everything I wanted... Sadly..
I hope you can get some great chicks out of the hatch, even if they aren't all the ones you want. My "want" list is so long I'd never be able to hatch them all, so I have to stick with just a few.
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I guess a few is better then nothing though.
Best of luck!

So I got a wonderful surprise today when I checked on the BSPW and the Sapphire. Tizzy the Sapphire laid her first egg! If fertile that means it is the BSPW roo. Soooo I think it is just going to fall into the bator.

Congrats!


I'm getting happy. 12 alive 1 DIE (died in egg) that leaves 17 eggs that should be today/ tomorrow as day 21... Staggered hatch is interesting. First time for me.
I'm sorry about the one you lost, but getting 12 chicks is awesome! I hope the rest hatch healthy and adorable (I don't think chicks can help but be adorable).
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Hatching day finally arrived. 7 chicks out,7 more to go.

So cute. They are all mixes from my flock

So awesome! They are so cute!
I might join in on this hatch-a-long. Add me for now...

Welcome. So glad you could join!
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My daughter was on one side, me on the other. They were going back and forth trying to catch our hands
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so cute. The slightly younger ones kept looking at the day olds like 'crazy bird... Lay down and sleep. Stop stepping on us'.
They sound so cute! I can't wait until my new chicks hatch. Right now I'm working with some 6 week old bantams but they're a little stunted from the cold so they are the size of about 4 week-olds. They sleep up in my room at night and though they were originally parent raised, they will eat out of my hand and let me hold them and enjoy when I talk to them.

Hi all I have never participated in a hatch along but you gotta start sometime!!!!!
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Welcome to the hatch-a-long!
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So I was looking for the contest of the pictures and to my surprise it found this in my bator. I just had to share.

Poor thing, I had to rub a warm wet napkin on him to take it off.


Poor little thing! But so cute too! I guess it wanted to be a camel instead of a chicken. : )

Not chicken related, but we are relatively new fish owners, small tank in the livingroom. One of our female platy live bearers has been looking pregnant for a few weeks. Well I just took a look at her and SHES HAVING BABIES!!!! So tiny and so adorable! Me and DD are watching her now and we are so excited. I know they are just fish, But I cant help but smile and be excited.

It is so amazing to see any animal give birth! That's so awesome!
Little fish are so cute.

Went out to check on my chickens this morning we are in a BAD deep freeze right now and it dropped to -10 this morning. Went into the Silkie coop to find this little girl hardly breathing and from her neck up she was pure ice......... The water heater broke and when the water froze my tank exploded and she apparently was the only one who got wet. She seems to be doing better now but she wants to be outside with her flock so bad. I just cannot let her back out until she is fully dry and is breathing better than she is right now.


Poor thing. I'm glad you got to her in time to help her. I hope she gets all the way better soon.

If she is still weak for a while she might enjoy sleeping in a crate in the garage or basement. I've got a couple chickens indoors because of the weather (at least during the night) and though they are messy I love knowing they are safe also.

My mom is coming into town for Easter and wants to take a bunch of chicks home with her she wants some of everything so I don't have to do just my olive eggers for the hatch along!!!

Why can't I have that excuse? LOl.
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Sally you said the magic word "more"!!!!

One of my Roos


My newest roo









These will have to do for now having problems uploading pics from my phone.
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Those are some gorgeous, gorgeous birds! Amazing photos!
 
Sally, love your coop photos. And the signs..are darling! Too funny. :)

I need a bigger coop. Well, I want..another .. bigger coop. Won't happen though. Not enough room. My DH. has made me another small coop, I have a nursery coop, and I have another small run..with a sort of coop at one end, not all the way inclosed..but can be pretty nice for them to get out of the wind.
 
Sally, love your coop photos.  And the signs..are darling!     Too funny.  :)

I need a bigger coop.  Well, I want..another .. bigger coop.  Won't happen though.  Not enough room.  My DH. has made me another small coop, I have a nursery coop, and I have another small run..with a sort of coop at one end, not all the way inclosed..but can be pretty nice for them to get out of the wind.

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can you take pics of your nursery coop? I need some ideas ASAP. I have a 5'x10' pin that I want to put the baby coop in and I'll be rewiring it with hardware cloth for better protection. But I would love some good ideas.
 
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Here is my incubator and the eggs I put into it (12 in all), one of which had a hole in it. I picked away at it to see if it was rotten or anything but though I removed some shell, when I saw there was no hole in the membrane I just couldn't break it open and kill the chick inside. I'm going to see if it has any chance to develop and if there are any suggestions on how to help it I would love them. I'm worried about bacteria, moisture escaping, or the chick breaking through the membrane early and bleeding. It still looks alive in there, so I'm very carefully turning it half way when I turn the other eggs. Temperature swings are really bad, but I'm hoping they can make it through.

Here is the egg with the hole in it in the incubator. It gets its own corner so it is safe and won't explode on the other eggs.


It is also so cold that my poor, stunted bantams get to spend time inside. Their mother decided they were fully feathered and left them at six weeks of age (they hatched the day after Christmas). However, because they were forced to feather out early and have been having trouble getting enough food or water in this weather, they are far smaller then other bantams their age would be. They have a heat-light out-doors, but when it gets this cold the heat-light really doesn't do that much to help them.

I'm pretty sure they have the same father, Azul, my blue silkie rooster (I recently found him a new home). One has silkied feathers and I think he/she is Ruby (their mother's) chick. Rain is the smaller silkie mix (no feathers on the feet, four toes) and the blue bantam, the larger of the two, seems almost to have dorking type short legs. I do have a dorking, but I don't know if she was laying at the time and all the eggs in the nest I thought belonged to Ruby. He is likely a rooster by his behavior, though I don't know yet. His/her name is Noel and he has feathered legs and five toes but the small head and short legs and long body are more like that of a dorking then a silkie or OEGB.
We need to buy new chick food so in this picture they were eating (and loving) scrambled eggs and little bits of wheat bread. You see, the adults have been pigging out on all the chick food and so we ran out and then these poor guys were hungry and cold at the same time. They are feeling much better in the warmth up here. Rain is much nicer and calmer about it then Noel, who isn't too keen on being touched or held, though he will eat out of your hand. He also pecks at you in defense of himself, something I've noticed far more often in rooster chicks then pullets.


It was pretty dark when this picture was taken, but the chick in the front is Rain and the chick in the back is Noel.


Rain is nearly black in color but Noel is a nice dark steel blue.
 
Here is my incubator and the eggs I put into it (12 in all), one of which had a hole in it. I picked away at it to see if it was rotten or anything but though I removed some shell, when I saw there was no hole in the membrane I just couldn't break it open and kill the chick inside. I'm going to see if it has any chance to develop and if there are any suggestions on how to help it I would love them. I'm worried about bacteria, moisture escaping, or the chick breaking through the membrane early and bleeding. It still looks alive in there, so I'm very carefully turning it half way when I turn the other eggs. Temperature swings are really bad, but I'm hoping they can make it through. Here is the egg with the hole in it in the incubator. It gets its own corner so it is safe and won't explode on the other eggs. It is also so cold that my poor, stunted bantams get to spend time inside. Their mother decided they were fully feathered and left them at six weeks of age (they hatched the day after Christmas). However, because they were forced to feather out early and have been having trouble getting enough food or water in this weather, they are far smaller then other bantams their age would be. They have a heat-light out-doors, but when it gets this cold the heat-light really doesn't do that much to help them. I'm pretty sure they have the same father, Azul, my blue silkie rooster (I recently found him a new home). One has silkied feathers and I think he/she is Ruby (their mother's) chick. Rain is the smaller silkie mix (no feathers on the feet, four toes) and the blue bantam, the larger of the two, seems almost to have dorking type short legs. I do have a dorking, but I don't know if she was laying at the time and all the eggs in the nest I thought belonged to Ruby. He is likely a rooster by his behavior, though I don't know yet. His/her name is Noel and he has feathered legs and five toes but the small head and short legs and long body are more like that of a dorking then a silkie or OEGB. We need to buy new chick food so in this picture they were eating (and loving) scrambled eggs and little bits of wheat bread. You see, the adults have been pigging out on all the chick food and so we ran out and then these poor guys were hungry and cold at the same time. They are feeling much better in the warmth up here. Rain is much nicer and calmer about it then Noel, who isn't too keen on being touched or held, though he will eat out of your hand. He also pecks at you in defense of himself, something I've noticed far more often in rooster chicks then pullets. It was pretty dark when this picture was taken, but the chick in the front is Rain and the chick in the back is Noel. Rain is nearly black in color but Noel is a nice dark steel blue.
I have successfully put wax on eggs with cracks that hatched just fine. I have the beeswax for pysanky eggs, but I think straight candle wax would work... probably wouldn't use scented
 

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