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

[mr bellmere]

The Lavender keet above doesn't have the normal fully pearled keet markings/stripes, the middle head stripe is wider and the body colors are sort of blended together... this is what some call the solid pattern, but some call it Teddy Bear (I should have added that to the labels, oops). It's pretty common, even in places like Australia. It's a mutation of just the down, but I'm not sure how or why it happens. He will feather out as a normal looking Lavender tho. A lot of my keets hatch with the solid or Teddy Bear pattern, and I hatch them in all colors of the fully pearled varieties. (But I hatch plenty of normally marked keets too, lol). Most of the TBs are usually Pied to some extent... but this guy doesn't look like he's going to be Pied, at this point anyway. I'll get a better look at him in a couple days when he's fluffed better and has grown a little more. He may end up with just a few white chest feathers and some white flights... maybe.

I agree Peeps it does seem to be the colour of the down, I would have said nope they are pied but studying my birds every day this season it does seem they turn out how your saying. TB can turn out pied, solid or splat pied with a few white in the flights. It does seem to change when they grow & mature. I guess some wont agree tho.
love seeing pics of your babies, shows how different they are to ours & some so similar as keets but dont grow out the same as adults, eg powder blues. Apparently we have them in oz now so with the whites I cant wait hahhahahhahaha

I see you have a perfectly good use for doileys tho in your above pic, must get mum to make some hahahhahahaha.
My loan cin is going great guns & the breeders have had a last spurt for the end of season. Lets home I get some of the bubs I want. Thinking of parting with 10k to get some whites, any takers lol.

 

[PeepsCA]

You guys have Powder Blues down there now? Hmmm... Mutations evolving finally? Pics pics pics! I'd love to see your Cinnamon too btw! I have 2 Pied Powder Blue males that showed up in my last few hatches from last year. It took me several weeks to notice they had no pearling at all, lol.


With as common as the solid or Teddy Bear down markings are in hatches all across the globe, seems like there'd be more info and more mention of it... and a better understanding of why it occurs. Whatever the reason.cause... it's cute, but sure makes identifying keets more of a task that it already can be sometimes, lol.

LOL, and those aren't doilies my keets are on, that's some of the fancier rubberized shelf liner. I don't like using it because it's too light weight and the keets end up grabbing a corner and dragging it around, exposing the slippery newspaper underneath

But it was all the dollar store had when I was shopping for keet supplies, so... they can poop on it and have some traction while they are poopin' on it, I just have to make sure the corners are weighted or taped down, lol.

There's another White keet in the hatcher for you this morning, I'll take that 10K Glad you are enjoying my hatches, this is hatch #4... I might stop for a while after hatch #8, which I just set on Tuesday. I have not decided yet, but I'm just not all that enthused about all the feeding, watering and brooder cleaning this season after last season beat me so hard... and I'm only 90 or so keets into the season so far, lol

 

[PeepsCA]

Pffft, when am I gonna learn!?!?

When ya move 2 day old keets to a bigger brooder... DUH, YA DON'T PUT THE FEED AND WATER IN THERE FIRST BEFORE THE KEETS, cuz they turn from keets into cockroaches on speed within a split second of setting them down, and the brand new, pretty, clean brooder ends up a mucked up mess in about 15 seconds !!!!!!! There was feed kicked everywhere, more than half the keets had splashed around in the waterer, slipped, fell down, flipped over on their backs, bicycled around, got soaked, then found their feet, changed directions, slipped and fell in the feed, got coated in it like shake-n-bake, then ran back to the waterer and splashed around some more making starter-feed-soup.
WOW SERIOUSLY???? All I could do was sit there and stare with my jaw on the floor as it all transpire !!!!! ACK!!!

OK, so I was gonna post pics of my most recent hatch of 16 keets, but it'll have to wait until I clean the brooder tomorrow

I took the feed and water out and will let them all settle down before I put it back in, but the mucked up brooder and messy keets aren't very photogenic at the moment, to say the least

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO in the meantime... look what I woke up to yesterday morning!!!!

It was a really cold morning, 36 degrees, so I put a lil baby goat sweater on him that I made out of an old sweatshirt sleeve and wrapped him in warm towel out of the dryer, lol. (I don't have any baby clothes or I probably would have dressed him up in those too, lmao!)


Here he is later in the day when it was warmer, the sun was out and he didn't need the sweater




Sorry, WAY WAY off topic, but I had to share some pics of SOMETHING, since the keets blew their photo op!

 

[Country Chickens]

OMG that is so cute!!! It's a goat kid, right? I've never had goats. Didn't think I ever would, til I started coming on here and seeing all you people's pics. Now...it's just a matter of time.

That really is the cutest thing I've seen since...since...well, since the last pics you posted! I'm cracking myself up over here.

But--I have news, too!!! We have another keet! We got back from the flock swap today and were surprised to see both our guinea eggs (you remember most the eggs in this batch weren't fertile) had pipped. Then we were busy this afternoon and TA DA! The keet popped right out while we weren't looking! This is only day 26, but hey, if he wants to hatch I'm cool with that. I'll post pics when he's dry. Maybe by then his buddy will have hatched, too, though his looked like a more recent pip. Yay keets!!! Yay kids!!!

 

[PeepsCA]

Ok I couldn't handle the messy brooder for more than 20 mins, lol, so into the holding bucket they went while I cleaned up the mess...

 

[PeepsCA]

OMG that is so cute!!! It's a goat kid, right? I've never had goats. Didn't think I ever would, til I started coming on here and seeing all you people's pics. Now...it's just a matter of time.

That really is the cutest thing I've seen since...since...well, since the last pics you posted! I'm cracking myself up over here.

But--I have news, too!!! We have another keet! We got back from the flock swap today and were surprised to see both our guinea eggs (you remember most the eggs in this batch weren't fertile) had pipped. Then we were busy this afternoon and TA DA! The keet popped right out while we weren't looking! This is only day 26, but hey, if he wants to hatch I'm cool with that. I'll post pics when he's dry. Maybe by then his buddy will have hatched, too, though his looked like a more recent pip. Yay keets!!! Yay kids!!!

YaY, another keet (maybe 2!). That's cool, see... incubate at the right temp and they hatch on time, lol. Glad you caught that when you did. Now maybe all your hatches will have much better success rates!

And yes, the pics above are of a baby goat. He's a muttgoat, but a cute one Pure black, and a total lover.
LOL... I can see it now, you'll have goats in no time, hehe

 

[Country Chickens]

I know! So glad my hubby took the initiative and contacted Brinsea about that. I would've tended to think I was just doing something wrong and let it go a lot longer...which is why we make a good team.

Keets above are beautiful--and clean! Did you clean them? But...tags?

lol What are the two brownish ones to the far right? And the brown one to the far left, is he just a pearl grey teddy bear? Cause he's got that silver streak on his head so I'm not sure.... I can't seem to get this!

Oh, well. Guess I'll just have to hatch lots and lots of keets so I can practice!!!

 

[PeepsCA]

LOL sorry, I got lazy and didn't label them all in this pic. And yes, lol... I gently cleaned them all off with a soft tooth brush before their photo shoot, (dangit, stop makin' me reveal my secrets, lol).

The 2 Brown keets on the far right are Pied Browns with the Teddy Bear/solid down markings (super wide head stripe), just not very Pied (what I call Slightly Pied), but the lighter one is probably a male (Hens are usually darker). I am seeing the wide head stripe combined with body stripes on that guy tho... weird, lol. Usually when they have the wide head stripe like that the body stripes are blended, hmmmm so he's a combo lol. The Brown keet to the far left is also a Pied Brown (normal markings), but probably a Hen since it's brown strips are so dark...

No Pied Pearl Greys or Teddy Bear Pearl Greys have shown up in my hatches lately, just the 2 from batch #2 I think, and they were Heavily Pied. Thats ok tho, cuz when my other flocks kick it into laying gear they will produce lots.

Speakin of Pearl Greys... I tricked my full time free rangers last week and got them to run into a pen using feed as a lure (evil laugh) and then wormed them for 3+ days with safeguard. I was suspicious that they were laying secretively, but no eggs in 4 days, so... they haven't started laying yet. So far just this young flock.

 

[perchie.girl]

so.... you had them caught. did you band them too?

 

[PeepsCA]

No, I did not band them, I have the flu so I wasn't interested in Guinea Wrestling and getting beat up right now, lol ... but tricking them into the pen was easier than I expected, so I know I can do it again once I'm not coughing/sneezing my head off. They need their follow up worming in 10 days with ivermectin, so I'll probably do it then since I'm going to be catching and handling each bird anyway.