Uh oh... found an egg today! ... - A journal of sorts, from finding eggs to hatching them... Update

[PeepsCA]

Yay! Cute little Royal Purple keet! Congrats!

Bummer about your Pied being off her nest, IMO... Broody Guineas are worthless, unless they are totally secluded in a safe spot that THEY chose and we don't even know about it, lol.

I have separate pastures my that my different flocks free range in, and they typically do not jump the fences and for the most part stay within' their own areas... but usually I rotate everybody's free ranging times and try to keep a close eye on them all while they are out to make sure that my Pearl Greys and Royal Purples aren't being sneaky and muddying up my hatches, lol.

 

[daylily]

Okay I have to ask! How do you do that? and how long do you allow each group to free range? Inquiring minds want to know.

Recandled eggs last night with better flashlight and I was so pleased!

I have active embryo's in all 12 of them!!!! Yeah! I watch a lot of u-tube videos on candling to make sure what I was seeing was the real deal

and sure enough there was the air sac and the veins and the fairly large embryo's moving. We area on day 9 so 12 more days to go!

Etta moved her nest again so .... I have some eggs to find. They are very sneaky though this time. I cannot find it to save my life and I searched everywhere.! Both neighbors properties, the woods, the old burn pile. I kind of think it is in the old burn pile but you never know.

The royal purple keets are so pretty! I can hardy wait.

 

[JLeigh]

daylily, I've been trying to find some informative videos on YouTube about candling, and I can find many for chickens, ducks, but not one showing guinea eggs. Am I missing them?

 

[Country Chickens]

I always wait til two weeks to candle my guinea eggs and then it is kinda obvious if there's a keet cause there's a big dark thing in there that isn't in the infertile ones. Lazy man's way, I know. I candle earlier with the chicken eggs, but they are easier to see inside of!

On closer inspection, the pied had not abandoned her eggs--she'd just woken up and realized the cage was there and rolled all her eggs out, then couldn't get herself out! Brilliant, I know. Luckily that was in the morning and I'd let the rest the flock out. The white and pearl girls came and sat on the eggs (splitting them into two piles) until I heard all the drama and came to see what was the matter and let the pied out of her cage. Then she kicked the other girls off the bigger pile and claimed it. Tonight the other girls had abandoned the smaller pile but the pied was still sitting on hers, so I collected the abandoned one and left her alone, then left the dog out to keep the predators away. Our place is pretty clean of predators generally--we've had a pretty ditsy silkie roo sometimes decide to spend the night off in the woods and so long as our dog was out nothing ate him. I'm hoping she'll be okay. Whether or not she actually hatches anything is kinda unlikely but I can't seem to stop her from trying.

 

[daylily]

daylily, I've been trying to find some informative videos on YouTube about candling, and I can find many for chickens, ducks, but not one showing guinea eggs. Am I missing them?

I just watched the chicken and goose egg candling videos to see what it is I'm looking for exactly and that worked fine. There were guinea eggs hatching though. I just wanted to know if I was doing it wrong? Which I was a little but with the new way I could see the Air sac and the dark spot in the middle moving and on some I was able to see veining very clearly. Others it was a little vague but was there. Hope this helps.

 

[JLeigh]

It helps. I looked at a bunch of videos and photographs, and feel better about being able to tell a fertile egg from an infertile. This is my first try at incubating, and I'm sorta type A personality, and I want to make sure I'm incubating fertile eggs.
Thanks for your help. Wish me some luck, 'cause I'm sure gonna need it.

 

[perchie.girl]

I finally set my Eggs in the 1588 incubator. Wednesday. Collected 4 Guinea eggs and 16 Arucana eggs. I went a little over on storage time but the last two eggs were collected that day. I stopped collecting Guinea eggs because they are laying them all in the nest.... There is no way those birds are getting out of their coop/run and its keet proof. So we will see if someone decides to set. I would really rather them set on their own at least once.

By the way I have noticed something very interesting about my little flock. Before they started laying eggs they were loud and obnoxious .... typical Guineas but with that extra overtone of BUCK WHEAT. I tried to sleep up at my house about a month ago and noticed that one of those females Buck wheated all night long. Now they are laying eggs they are pretty dang quiet. More like the older guineas I had before.

Whew..... I am sure it will start up again prior to next laying season starting next year but its kind of nice to have a normal sounding crew.

Oh and I didnt candle my eggs before I put them in the bator I was too busy with the "meltdown" here. When I started setting up the incubator here at my grandmas house she had a fit. She insisted the incubator had to go out on the back porch or in the garage NOT in the house. So I grabbed up everything and took it the next day to moms house where I could set it up in my late fathers laboratory. LOL. Yep I had a dad who was an inventor/scientist.

So the 'bater is sitting in a room full of Physics books Mechanical engineering books a lab bench with soldering iron stations projects stopped mid way through and lots and lots of notes and papers..... I miss him still. Mom is going through Radiation Therapy and I take her to the hospital every morning so I can check the bator once a day. (they got her cancer so she is good its just more insurance after surgery)

So far the Hygrometer/thermometer I got to monitor the bator is registering 100-101 degrees and 45-50 percent humidity. The instructions that came with it state that the Genisis 1588 if set up under 5000 feet is guaranteed to never exceed the temperature presets. The way they can guarantee it is the temperature settings are done by DIP switches. These are the earliest form of digital device ever invented and are incredibly reliable. As long as you keep the center tray filled with water the humidity will never go above 50 percent because humidity is regulated by surface area. Therefore thermometer readings are at best only a safeguard against cataclysmic failure and shouldn't be relied upon to be accurate more than +- two or three degrees. A better way to determine the eggs are developing is to weigh them and log their weight. They should loose approximately 14% of their weight to humidity loss and when candling the air pocket should increase in size accordingly.

I am not going to get that much into the science of it all myself I just want to be able to hatch a few occasionally to keep my flock size up. But I thought it an interesting read from the people who are in the business of making exceptional products that are soo reliable.

Oh and since I am hatching Guinea eggs and Chicken eggs I am going to go ahead with the whole no need to turn after four days thing. But will be only doing that during chicken egg hatch so the guinea eggs will not be turned after eighteen days. We will see how well this works.

deb

 

[PeepsCA]

Congrats on setting eggs finally!!! And good luck with your Guineas maybe brooding their own clutch

Your temp is too high tho, still air needs to be maintained at 99.5 degrees... are you sure your thermometer is accurate? Did you move the therm/hygrom unit around to different places in the 'bator to see if you get different temp readings? Both of my 1588s were set at 99.5-99.7 degrees right from the factory, but it does seem to be a little warmer in 2 corners on occasion, but for the most part it's 99.5-99.7 throughout. If you know your thermometer is 100% accurate, then you might want to adjust the switches on the 1588's temp switches and bring it down a notch. You may have really early hatches, and possibly leg or congenital issues with your keets and chicks because it's a little too warm...

 

[perchie.girl]

Its not a still air. My thermometer Hygrometer is a reptile one with leads that feed through the groove that goes in the corner for the egg turner. This way the readout can be set on top of the incubator so you can read it very easily. I set the leads down on either side of the eggs. I don't think the thermometer is very accurate. The one that came with the incubator is right on. I dont think I will adjust anything till this hatch finishes just because like you said the preset is 99.5 -99.7. So I trust the incubator.

If anything I may get a different Hygrometer/thermometer. At a later date. Right now I am assuming that 100-101 means 99.5-99.7 because its steady. Right now I have 30 bucks in the bank and no future income till moms done with her radiation. 3 weeks.

deb

Congrats on setting eggs finally!!! And good luck with your Guineas maybe brooding their own clutch

Your temp is too high tho, still air needs to be maintained at 99.5 degrees... are you sure your thermometer is accurate? Did you move the therm/hygrom unit around to different places in the 'bator to see if you get different temp readings? Both of my 1588s were set at 99.5-99.7 degrees right from the factory, but it does seem to be a little warmer in 2 corners on occasion, but for the most part it's 99.5-99.7 throughout. If you know your thermometer is 100% accurate, then you might want to adjust the switches on the 1588's temp switches and bring it down a notch. You may have really early hatches, and possibly leg or congenital issues with your keets and chicks because it's a little too warm...

 

[PeepsCA]

Well the total number of keets from this last hatch were a little disappointing

With an early summer heatwave bearing down on me here in my little section of the secluded valley I live in I had some pretty drastic temp fluctuations in the house... extra warm in the house some days, extra cool at night from leaving too many windows open... and I think this hatch paid the price for all that. Doesn't make me very happy or enthused about continuing to hatch more, but I still have 2 batches humming away in the 'bators, people on a waiting list, and I am collecting tons of eggs every day... so I can't quit now.

I ended up with quite a few eggs that were late stage quitters in this batch, plus 3 keets pipped but died before hatching... they looked healthy when I opened the eggs, weren't sticky, shrink wrapped or anything, so I am not sure what happened there. And to add insult to injury I lost 1 of my Chocolates to whatever in the brooder, just found it dead in the brooder in the AM that day after I moved it over with 10 other keets that were all happily running around eating starter feed and grow gel, drinking and pooping as they should be. It looked like it was just sleeping, but nope. Lifeless and already rigored

Bummer, hatches like this make me want to quit hatching for the season

On a slightly brighter note, I've already reached the 300 keet mark with this hatch, and I did hatch out 2 more Chocolates and another Opaline in this hatch too (3 more keepers).

So... I ended up with only 27 keets tin this hatch, and one keet is iffy and struggling from a rough/late hatch and a resulting curled toe/foot problem. I put a black tape flipper on it's foot but it seemed to mostly just stress the keet out more and make it want to try to walk less, it would fall down give one or 2 tries to get back on it's feet and just decide to lay there while the others just trampled it, so I took the flipper off today. The toe/foot issue looks better, but the keet's not eating and drinking as much as it should, and I can see that it's starting to fade/give up already. I've got too much going on right now to baby it 24/7, but I do dip it's beak in water w/poultry vitamins & electrolytes in it as often as I can, stand it up on it's feet and sprinkle starter feed in front of it on and off thru the day. If it can't make it with that much help, then it wasn't meant to be.

Here's a pic of the remaining 17 keets from Hatch #12... I already sold 10 of the heartiest/most active keets from this batch yesterday (along withthe last 6 I had left from my last large hatch) and didn't get a chance to get a group pic of every body before they were picked up... I was just too busy. Minus the 3 keets I am keeping, the remaining 14 keets (or 13 keets if the one with the toe issue doesn't make it) are already sold as well and should be picked up by this weekend. Sold out AGAIN!!!

Here's the Opaline and the 2 Chocolate keets... and I put the pure White keet in there just for contrast... at least i think it's pure White, it's the first pure white from my young flock, so I'm going to get a better look at it in another couple days to confirm it's color. It's another one of those "I think I kinda see some head and faint body stripes... wait, no I don't" cases.

I already lost count of how many Chocolate keets I've hatched this year, 8 or 9 maybe? (It's written down in my hatching journal, plus they're all banded with wing bands except these 2 newest babies so far), but I'm pretty happy that I'm getting a nice collection of them going

It was one of my original long term goals when I started hatching out all the colors from the batch of light colors and Pied keets I bought for a new breeding flock back in 2010... I really wanted some Coral Blues and Chocolates, and I di dnot want to order any! Next season I'm going to try for more Blondes...

I'm really happy that all my keets are selling so fast this year, that does at least boost up my ambition to keep on hatching... but I need to stop keeping keets now, lol. So far I have pulled aside around 40 keets for myself from this year's hatching escapade. And I just moved 21 juvenile keepers (A couple Lite Blues, a bunch of my Chocolates, a Blonde, several Pied Royal Purples) out to the grow out pen yesterday, they are loving life... all the extra room, fresh air and sunshine, bugs to chase, new perches to hang out on and so much to see/watch going on in the yard and pastures from where their pen sits.. I'll work on getting some pics of them soon.