I see
3 laced
2 black
1 blue
1 white
1 choc orp
Am I correct?
Are the black orps from your blue or lav pens? Or are they from a sex linked project - like choc female & male black orps?
That is what I see too.
3 Silver-laced are obviously from the Silver-laced Orpington pen. With Five hens laying now, I'm not sure who the mothers are, but I can pretty much guarantee Victoria, Mel or Sue, and Duchess are the most likely dams. Either Mel or Sue, I'm not sure which lays her egg on the ground inside the barn. She has shunned all nest boxes I've given them. It's a very large egg that usually has some speckling on it. None of those have ever hatched the last couple of times I have set them. I'm not sure if Hollywood isn't covering her, or if it has something to do with the eggs being the dirtiest because she insists on laying them on the wet ground. On that note I did get some lovely old milk crate style nest boxes (along with a fantastic ladder) from a friend that had an old chicken coop on their property that they are going to burn. So we salvaged a few things. Once I get some more hay to stuff them, perhaps one of those will be more acceptable.
The two Black chicks (the biggest one and the chick with the stark white eyebrows) are from Dahlia, the Black Orpington. I'd recognize her egg any day. So Caspian, the extra Silver-laced male is the father (son of Duchess and brother to Victoria).
The Blue chick is also from that pen, which means Agatha is the mother and Caspian the father. I'll be interested to see how it turns out. I'm glad you think Blue also. I didn't label that egg, or if I did when the chick hatched it obliterated that part of the shell. I was undecided for a couple of days, but was leaning towards a dark blue.
The White Orpington came from Derek and Anne. It appears white/silver versus Derek and Oddette when they were younger. Those two that came from the Silver-laced pen last year were a white/yellow-gold down at hatch. None of Odette's eggs developed, but she lays inconsistently and Anne is Derek's preferred hen. If I've forgotten to mention the woman I traded SLO eggs to for the turkey hens and the newest SL hen had chicks hatching. She did end up with Whites out of the SL eggs, so Hollywood must carry recessive white. I'm not sure if it's Mel or Sue (or both of them) that carry it also. I didn't hatch any this go around.
The "Chocolate" is actually from the Silver-laced pen. If you remember last year, the chicks I hatched from them would sometimes throw chicks that looked chocolate or gold-laced. To date all of those chicks, while having down that indicates another pattern/color, have feathered in visually Silver-laced. So I'll keep an eye on this one, but it can't actually be a chocolate, unless the Silver-laced birds are also carrying chocolate. I know it wasn't from Prudence, the Chocolate pullet, as the egg was labeled. And Caspian over Prudence wouldn't throw visual Chocolates.
I did set 22 eggs last night in the new NutureRight 360 I picked up from
Tractor Supply Co. yesterday. I also set eggs in the Rcom and the
Brinsea Mini Advance Tuesday with 10 and 9 eggs respectively for a grand total of 41 eggs. All of them are from the Silver-laced pen and White pen, bar one egg from the mixed pen. I was an egg shy so the roommate picked one egg at random from the drying rack (I hadn't washed eggs yet) to fill the last hole in the bigger incubator. I'm confident it was Dahlia's egg, so the chick should stand out like a sore thumb when they hatch. I'm hoping to hatch several batches like that to get a good started bunch going to pick new breeders from and to sell the others off to breeders or people with backyard flocks. There has been a huge call for laying hens and eggs since this whole COVID-19 pandemic.
On the 360,
@Faraday40, does it turn your eggs really smoothly? My
Brinsea and Rcom are very smooth. I only know they are turning when the machine beeps to let you know. I forced the 360 to turn twice last night and was surprised to hear the eggs actually rolling across the plastic grid underneath them. Is that normal? And are you planning on pulling the turning mechanism out at lockdown, or are you going to let them hatch with it in place?
That would open a bigger brooder too.
