The Moonshiner's Leghorns

[The Moonshiner]

You haven't even touched into the frizzled satin showgirl "silkies" yet...

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/what-is-my-silkie.1667987/post-28660115

 

[Somewhere_In_The_Clouds]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/what-is-my-silkie.1667987/post-28660115

Complete with the pink skin...
Though I'm having a hard time telling if that one's a satin or sizzle

 

[KF0002]

Complete with the pink skin...
Though I'm having a hard time telling if that one's a satin or sizzle

Satin and Sizzle. Sounds like a tanning salon. Or an escort service.

 

[The Moonshiner]

 

[KF0002]

17
74
3rd
View attachment 4147849View attachment 4147850

I see a few Buffs in there this time! Glad a few of those hatched. Those little lavender gold or silver duckwing looking chicks are adorable. I need!

 

[The Moonshiner]

I see a few Buffs in there this time! Glad a few of those hatched. Those little lavender gold or silver duckwing looking chicks are adorable. I need!

Ya 3 buffs but there was 7 eggs so....
But ya happy for any that hatch. They'll add up.
I don't have any lavender gold just lavender silver DW.
The silver DW pen is a single gene (I think) barred blue silver DW over barred silver DW (silver crele) girls. So ya there's gonna be variations depending on blue or not and SF or DF barring or no barring.
The chicks from those 2 pens can easily get mixed up so I'm hatching in completely different hatchers.

 

[The Moonshiner]

I need to go back to hatching 101.
I need to get a few reliable humidity gauges for the incubators that don't have them. Or for that matter even the ones that do just to double check.
I also need to go back to proper storing eggs before setting. I always kept them in my room which has AC all summer. I hand turn them three times a day but decided to store them in my Little Giant eggturners.
That eliminates worrying about turning them. Surely it turning them every couple hours isn't too much? I think what the problem might be is that I don't want to overload the circuit in my room and besides by normal stuff I may have a few incubators plugged in at all times. I moved the Turners and egg storing to the laundry room and it doesn't have AC. That room may be too hot to be good for them. And I have no idea the humidity there either. I need to get a thermometer with the humidity gauge and put on the wall in that room just so I can see what's going on. Would be a good idea to do the same for my room.
I just don't have luck with knowing which ones are actually accurate. I think that's a couple things to start with. Locked down for my next back is tomorrow. When I candle I may draw the lines around the air cell take a look at them to see if it looks like they're too big or too small. I never worried about humidity much and dry hatch until lockdown. I may have to change my ways or at least monitored some during storage and early incubating just to make sure that ain't the problem.
You would think I would have this incubating all figured out by now but this year has been a struggle like no other.

 

[The Moonshiner]

Also still working on getting power to chick house.
Got my fat ol 150' extension cord. Also got 50' of the 10 gauge bad @$$ wire to run from breaker box to an outlet for the garage. It's overkill too and outdoor use direct bury wire which I don't really need but I like it cause it's heavy duty with a thick durable sheathing.....

I can't run it in the wall just along it and wouldn't need to but I'm gonna run it in pvc conduct. Got it, the fittings, clamps, box etc.

Got the cool red outlet and plate cover so that gets me to the end of the cord that I need to plug lights into...
Ordered this today. It plugs right into the cord and is rated for same amount of watts the cord is. Has a built in 15 Amp breaker so with any luck if there's a short or over load it should flip its breaker before going into the cord or back to the house...

 

[KF0002]

I need to go back to hatching 101.
I need to get a few reliable humidity gauges for the incubators that don't have them. Or for that matter even the ones that do just to double check.
I also need to go back to proper storing eggs before setting. I always kept them in my room which has AC all summer. I hand turn them three times a day but decided to store them in my Little Giant eggturners.
That eliminates worrying about turning them. Surely it turning them every couple hours isn't too much? I think what the problem might be is that I don't want to overload the circuit in my room and besides by normal stuff I may have a few incubators plugged in at all times. I moved the Turners and egg storing to the laundry room and it doesn't have AC. That room may be too hot to be good for them. And I have no idea the humidity there either. I need to get a thermometer with the humidity gauge and put on the wall in that room just so I can see what's going on. Would be a good idea to do the same for my room.
I just don't have luck with knowing which ones are actually accurate. I think that's a couple things to start with. Locked down for my next back is tomorrow. When I candle I may draw the lines around the air cell take a look at them to see if it looks like they're too big or too small. I never worried about humidity much and dry hatch until lockdown. I may have to change my ways or at least monitored some during storage and early incubating just to make sure that ain't the problem.
You would think I would have this incubating all figured out by now but this year has been a struggle like no other.

I understand how frustrating that is, and despite hatching for literally over 20 years, I had a horrible time hatching turkey eggs when I first started out with them. Like no joke, I was getting about a 0-10% hatch rates with my first few sets. It was not nutritional, the birds were prime breeding age, they were not closely related and some completely unrelated, and fertility was 90-100% so the toms were doing their jobs. It forced me to nail everything down to a science in order to get poults to hatch. I had to buy new hygrometers (I love Govees that you can use to monitor temp/humidity with your phone). That is when I started doing a modified dry incubation and it has been a game changer, not just with turkey eggs but also chicken eggs.

But sometimes, no matter what you do, some breeds/varieties just don’t hatch well. We set a few clutches of eggs from a certain pair of birds this year and ZERO of those eggs hatched. It is due to a number of reasons, mainly the hen isn’t a spring chicken anymore and it getting up in years, and the line has just been kept pure and uninfused with fresh blood for so long, we had to infuse it with another line to try to salvage it. That may not be your case though if your birds aren’t older or the gene pool is bigger.

I store eggs in a spare turner as I collect them for the incubator so you can’t turn them too much I don’t think. And I think the sportsman turns every hour. But if the eggs are developing all the way to lockdown and then failing to hatch, it is likely a genetics issue at play or humidity. Usually too high of humidity will affect my hatch rates, and as long as you don’t incubate below 20% humidity, too low of humidity is probably not the issue. If it has been humid there, high ambient humidity may be causing the humidity in the incubators to be too high, even when running them dry. I would monitor the humidity in the rooms and in the incubators with some Govees. I get mine on Amazon. I have heard of people having to run a dehumidifier in the room with the incubator because their ambient humidity is high, so with as much rain as you have had, that could be possible.

 

[KF0002]

I woke up at 5am and a thought occurred to me as I was trying to go back to sleep. My Legbars can’t be silver. Their chick phenotype has never looked silver, whether pure or crossed. Even split silver/gold duckwing chicks will hatch looking silver so that can’t be it. Sorry to keep beating a dead horse, it is just frustrating to want an answer and not be able to find one.

So the Legbars are not Silver/Gold Duckwing based Crele.

And they do not have the autosomal recessive Ig gene like typical Legbars have as a diluter.

So what causes the dilution of gold in their hackle/saddle?

All of the Legbar/Leghorn chicks looked the same at hatch. Like Gold Duckwings because they are all gold duckwing based single barred crele. And they all are looking diluted in their hackles as they feather out.

There, I’m done. I won’t talk about it anymore.