The 8th Annual BYC Easter Hatch-a-long!!!!

[Yorkshire Coop]

Welcome to all the new members of the Easter Hatch a long!

 

[Yorkshire Coop]

There are some great candling pics to be found here ~ https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/development-of-a-chicken-embryo-day-by-day

 

[Lozuufy]

I have 12 turkey eggs in lockdown now. I just looked and I have 2 pips so far! They're due Friday but I'm guessing they may be early.

(yes, I really like turkeys)

 

[brucifer]

There is a thread on here about this that is anecdotal too. On that thread, they are still in the 60/40 and 40/60 range for predicting gender by egg shape.

It might be a bit fun to think you can do this, but it would be very shady to sell eggs as being female to people based on the roundness or pointy-ness of the egg.

I can go into the chicken reproductive reasons why this does not work too if you want me to. The basic point though is that there is no mechanism for an embryo to change the shape of an egg.

It is wishful thinking to think otherwise.

Whoa Nelly! Ron, you're going off on a tangent. Other than you making mention of it here, who's advocating selling hatching eggs based on this theory?

I mentioned in my first post that I had read about a study, and I have since posted that informal study. (I'll PM you the URL if you like.) I also stated in my first post that I had not verified the study. I'm not advocating anything other than people can test the hypothesis for themselves. There is nothing wrong with people setting up sound experiments and comparing results. It's even better if they replicate the experiment and control for confounding variables. It would a relatively simple thing for the scientific method to be strictly applied to the process. Experimenting is fun, and it's one way how we learn.

On a personal level, if one of the breeders from whom I purchase hatching eggs ever tried to sell me eggs claiming that the eggs would hatch into pullets, I would not go through with the purchase, and that breeder would be a former breeder of mine. Fortunately, I've neither met nor done business with any breeder who tried anything even remotely close to that.

Most chicken people that I come in contact with are good folks with a shared passion. We talk all kinds of things, and some do like to spin the yarn, and others have some interesting superstitions and ideas. To me, it's all fun. I listen to it all, and I try to glean what I think are the best ideas and practices, but at the end of the day, I do my own thing because I'm the one who has to live with the results.

I hope we have a clear understanding now. Happy hatching. Take care.

 

[Happy Chooks]

Quote: Me too.

I just set some Blue Partridge Brahma, Jubilee Orphington and an EE from my sister's flock last night, they are my first shipped eggs to incubate. Hoping for some to hatch but most look like they have clear speckles on the shells and no air sacs so I'm worried they may have frozen in the mail between Florida and Colorado. This round will finish before the hatchalong, and I happen to have silkie eggs coming in from AZ on March 20th, so I will be joining this event with my 12 silkie eggs. It will be so fun to see what everyone hatches.

Nice! I contemplated ordering some Jubilee Orps. They are so pretty!

Quote:

Well somehow my incubator spiked to 133 degrees... The eggs are screwed...

I'm so sorry.

Eventually, id like to get a few brooder plates. It will harken someday but or of my budget right now. I'm throwing everything I've got in to building breeding pens lol

I have the Brinsea brooder plates and love them.

I'm sooooo upset!!

I just realized that my turner hasn't been plugged in since I started my first batch of eggs on the 7th!!! Those babies are in the hatcher now, but I'm not feeling too optimistic since they went 18 days without getting turned, unless you count when I took them out to candle them...I'm so angry at myself! And the other babies are on Day 9 now...I'm hoping they'll be ok. It'll be my first hatch of true Ameraucanas after getting my breeding pens set up at the beginning of the month.

PLEASE OH PLEASE let some of my babies make it!! And the worst part is that I'm going to have to call my friend who had reserved some of the chicks about to hatch and tell her she may not be getting as many as she would have liked...I can't believe I did that....

Hopefully everything will be okay. Nature is stronger than you think.

Quote: Yuck Cynthia! What a bummer.

Hi guys

Bad bad day here. Just terrible and I can't stop crying.

We moved the 8 baby quail from our test hatch out to the brooder in the coop. This morning we discovered that the power tripped out in the coop(something that hasn't happened in like 8 months) probably because of the rain but we don't really know why.

All 8 baby quail were dead when we found them.

I feel just terrible and I know DH2B does too. We've never had that happen and unfortunately in spite of it being quite warm out today for the time of year and all other precautions they were gone.

I'm just devastated and I can't stop crying.

We will brood in the porch from now on at least until summer but probably always for quail and probably always a couple of weeks for chicks. This is so heartbreaking.

We have more quail hatching in two weeks and they will be brooded in the porch for sure.

I'm so sorry. It wasn't your fault.

She is an Icelandic hen that KYtinpusher hatched from shipped eggs. She decided to go with different breeds and pm'd me to see if I wanted the four pullets she had. I have two sons that live in KY and picked the girls up on a visit. Her daughter had handled Cupcake and she is the friendliest hen here

.....and the only one without an Icelandic name.
She has been broody each year and is a great momma.

She is beautiful Mary! Gotta love a great broody!

I bought some Gold laced English Orp eggs and I'm waiting for them to get here. I'm so eggcited. Definitely gonna put them in the Brinsea. If they're gonna hatch that's where it will happen at. I have a Hovobator and a cabinet my daughter gave me. I don't know the brand but I haven't used it yet. I plan to for this hatch a long if I collect enough eggs.

I read somewhere that eggs that are rounder will most likely hatch pullets and longer eggs most likely cockerels. Anybody know if this has any merit? I really don't want a bunch of boys i have to try to rehome.

Oooooooh, Gold laced Orps........so pretty!

And no, total wivestale on the rounder eggs hatching pullets.

Welcome to all the new members of the Easter Hatch a long!

Ditto that!

 

[FreedomFarm13]

Got some pics of my baby today...I took her out cuz she was making hungry sounds and the others still hadn't pipped so I figured it was safe to remove her...here she is!
You can see here that her one eye sticks out at a funny angle:

This is a shot of the wonky eye and her beak. It's not too bad, she can drink water.

She's real pretty. A kind of silver color with black on her back and wings:

I did end up rinsing her in warm water this morning to get the bits of shell and membrane off. We bonded while I was drying her off. I really hope she'll be ok...she can kinda stand and hobble around now, but her right side(same side as the messed up eye) seems a little weak. I've just been calling her Four, since she was in the egg laid on the 4th.
No news on the other eggs yet. These are silver laced wyandotte eggs, to answer your question @Cynthia12. So not large large. They're a solid medium large. I don't know what's taking them so long. How long should I wait before giving up on them hatching? If I candled them, would I be able to tell if they're still alive? I've heard that you can see when they've internally pipped, but I don't know what that looks like. I need help!! And please keep your fingers crossed for little Four!!

 

[ronott1]

Whoa Nelly! Ron, you're going off on a tangent. Other than you making mention of it here, who's advocating selling hatching eggs based on this theory?

I mentioned in my first post that I had read about a study, and I have since posted that informal study. (I'll PM you the URL if you like.) I also stated in my first post that I had not verified the study. I'm not advocating anything other than people can test the hypothesis for themselves. There is nothing wrong with people setting up sound experiments and comparing results. It's even better if they replicate the experiment and control for confounding variables. It would a relatively simple thing for the scientific method to be strictly applied to the process. Experimenting is fun, and it's one way how we learn.

On a personal level, if one of the breeders from whom I purchase hatching eggs ever tried to sell me eggs claiming that the eggs would hatch into pullets, I would not go through with the purchase, and that breeder would be a former breeder of mine. Fortunately, I've neither met nor done business with any breeder who tried anything even remotely close to that.

Most chicken people that I come in contact with are good folks with a shared passion. We talk all kinds of things, and some do like to spin the yarn, and others have some interesting superstitions and ideas. To me, it's all fun. I listen to it all, and I try to glean what I think are the best ideas and practices, but at the end of the day, I do my own thing because I'm the one who has to live with the results.

I hope we have a clear understanding now. Happy hatching. Take care.

That is great!

I have been in discussions about this and there are many that really believe that you can tell the gender of an embryo based on the egg shape. There are those both on BYC and online that sell eggs this way too. Often my posts are not directly in response to the person posting. These posts are read by a lot of people. If you google this topic, our posts from yesterday and today will come up high on the search.

I wanted to make sure that it was understood that this absolutely does not work. In order for any method to work for telling gender, you need to get above the coin flip level of results. That would be in the 90% correct range over thousands of eggs.

As an additional caution, There are a lot of bad eggs(pun!) out there in the poultry world. They have been around for a long time but with the current chicken fad going on there are a lot more. Beware of people on ebay selling Greenfire line hatching eggs. There really is no such thing. Once a person starts selling their own eggs, they are on longer from the original breeder and many of these breeders do not really have what you think you have. This is especially true for exotic breeds like ayam cemani.

They call a lot of these breeders "Straw Men". Often they are reselling hatchery eggs and chicks.

Be careful out there!

 

[ronott1]

Got some pics of my baby today...I took her out cuz she was making hungry sounds and the others still hadn't pipped so I figured it was safe to remove her...here she is!
You can see here that her one eye sticks out at a funny angle:

This is a shot of the wonky eye and her beak. It's not too bad, she can drink water.

She's real pretty. A kind of silver color with black on her back and wings:


I did end up rinsing her in warm water this morning to get the bits of shell and membrane off. We bonded while I was drying her off. I really hope she'll be ok...she can kinda stand and hobble around now, but her right side(same side as the messed up eye) seems a little weak. I've just been calling her Four, since she was in the egg laid on the 4th.

No news on the other eggs yet. These are silver laced wyandotte eggs, to answer your question @Cynthia12. So not large large. They're a solid medium large. I don't know what's taking them so long. How long should I wait before giving up on them hatching? If I candled them, would I be able to tell if they're still alive? I've heard that you can see when they've internally pipped, but I don't know what that looks like. I need help!! And please keep your fingers crossed for little Four!!

I think she will be fine!

She has both eyes and one is a bit swollen. That can happen from being stuck. You can get some medicated eye drops. Vetericyn sells that type or you could use one for people too.

 

[ChookLover02]

  I'm not sure!   Just got them from the net.     They are cute, and I love me some blues!

Ok, I was just curious because they look like my little EE and Black Silkie cross named Val

 

[FreedomFarm13]

Thanks, Ron! What about the other eggs? How long should I wait for them to hatch?