Utah!

[darbygill]

Also with that much loss what should I set my RH % at for lockdown?

 

[RedIII]

She has a few that my little buddy snuck under her, but they look to be around day 5. I may take them and put them in the incubator so that she doesn't have to worry about them.

I've already picked out a name for the newest baby. Vona. It means "to hope" in the Icelandic tongue. I had forgotten about your quail, Lisa. That gives me more hope, thanks!

 

[La Casa de Pollo]

Dang IFA employees--I was standing around the chickies today, trying to convince myself I had more than my share already...the IFA guy tells some people looking at chicks that Ameraucanas lay 3/week, and GSL's lay 4/week. The people ask if that is the most you can get per week and he says ya, 4/week is the max. Of course, I cannot stop myself from saying it...."you can ACTUALLY get 7/week from the GSL's." ..the IFA guy argues with me. " No ya can't. No chicken can lay that many eggs". I ask if he has ever had chickens.....nope. Doofus. The people probably think I am crazy. Just wait til those 4 GSL's they bought lay 28 eggs in one week....he he.

Speaking of doofus IFA employees, there is a gal out at our North store that we tease is the chicken nazi. She won't let you touch them. She won't let you buy only one at a time. She swears they are purebred Ameraucanas. She stands between you and the chicks like she is their Mother Hen and she is an offensive lineman protecting the QB. I hate buying chicks when she is in there, because I can't get a look at their feathers, wings, tails, legs ,nothing, she just grabs one and shoves it in the box and closes it and hands it to you. I was totally poised to get myself a Delaware Chickie, then she walked in to start her shift. She gave me the stink eye. "not you again"...that is what she was thinking....I owe it to her that i was able to come home Chick-less today. 300 pounds of feed, no chicks. I am set for a month at least. Thank you Chicken Nazi woman. Whoever you are. I don't like you much but you did me a favor

 

[La Casa de Pollo]

Also with that much loss what should I set my RH % at for lockdown?

Ohh Darby you know I am loving that spreadsheet lol. Another chicken geek, it's awesome!

If it were me I would not up the humidity. I try to get the loss as close as I can, but higher humidity early on has not worked for me. I go 60-65 at lockdown. There are others on here that have been hatching way longer than me though, listen to what they say if they chime in on this one.!

Red, Vona is perfect! Love it! I have a chick named Venus....lol it's comb is too red for its age tho! Will have to go with Vinnie!

 

[RedIII]

Dang IFA employees--I was standing around the chickies today, trying to convince myself I had more than my share already...the IFA guy tells some people looking at chicks that Ameraucanas lay 3/week, and GSL's lay 4/week. The people ask if that is the most you can get per week and he says ya, 4/week is the max. Of course, I cannot stop myself from saying it...."you can ACTUALLY get 7/week from the GSL's." ..the IFA guy argues with me. " No ya can't. No chicken can lay that many eggs". I ask if he has ever had chickens.....nope. Doofus. The people probably think I am crazy. Just wait til those 4 GSL's they bought lay 28 eggs in one week....he he.

Speaking of doofus IFA employees, there is a gal out at our North store that we tease is the chicken nazi. She won't let you touch them. She won't let you buy only one at a time. She swears they are purebred Ameraucanas. She stands between you and the chicks like she is their Mother Hen and she is an offensive lineman protecting the QB. I hate buying chicks when she is in there, because I can't get a look at their feathers, wings, tails, legs ,nothing, she just grabs one and shoves it in the box and closes it and hands it to you. I was totally poised to get myself a Delaware Chickie, then she walked in to start her shift. She gave me the stink eye. "not you again"...that is what she was thinking....I owe it to her that i was able to come home Chick-less today. 300 pounds of feed, no chicks. I am set for a month at least. Thank you Chicken Nazi woman. Whoever you are. I don't like you much but you did me a favor

 

[corvidae]

Quote:
Huh, never really bothered to weigh the eggs, to tell you the truth. I do dry incubation--no humidity added, just whatever the room air holds. At lockdown, I up the humidity to as close to 80% as I can. Sometimes I am doing near continuous hatching, so the humidity in the Sportsman is running high for a good chunk of the time the other eggs are incubating. Never found it to make much difference in the hatch. I've seen huge aircells on some of them and haven't had a problem hatching my own eggs. The only thing I've seen affect the incubation is temp and whether they are shipped eggs or not. If that temp is not right on the right range, it's almost a complete loss, or chicks hatch with birth defects. If its shipped eggs, it's a crapshoot either way.

 

[corvidae]

So I consulted my handy-dandy calendar yesterday and saw it was time to put some eggs in lockdown. Stuck them in there, threw some water in for humidity, and went off to work. This afternoon I thought, "Oh, better add some more water to the pan," not thinking too much about it since I have a couple more days to go on the hatch.

****** if there wasn't one little cream legbar girl running about in there and five BLRW eggs pipping away! ACK! I almost stroked. Clearly, my calendar has failed me. Certainly, it could not possibly be my own error. Has to be the calendar. It's possessed.

 

[corvidae]

Lisa--

I was at the IFA down here in Salt Lake earlier today (we have to stop hanging out at these places, seriously!) and I was thinking they might actually benefit from some kind of Chicken nazi. Their baby chicks kept escaping and my youngest son, along with another kid, were desperately trying to catch them. The chicks kept getting under the brooders and the kids were on the floor, belly down, trying to reach them. Being a nurse, I kept mentally freaking out and trying to figure out how I could safely autoclave my child, but I settled for grabbing an employee to help them. All the employees looked so harried. I talked to the owner and he told me they had sold over 1000 chicks today. Wow.

 

[Sphinx]

Yeah, as annoying as that chicken nazi sounds, Lisa, it actually sounds better than some of the other things i've seen. The Ogden IFA had tons of babies with pasty butt, and the employees seemed completely indifferent, saying that was XXX's job, and she wasn't there yet. In the "ameraucana" cage (twitch twitch on the false label), there were 3-4 dead chicks, and from the look of it, 1-2 had been there AT LEAST a day- they were totally flat and kind of sinking through the wire bottom. At the Layton Cal-ranch, they had nice aquarium type tanks you could easily see through, but were kind of locked up so you couldn't get to the birds. The employee saw that we kind of knew what we were doing and let me pick out the chicks my friend wanted and do all the handling. Actually, they let me do that at IFA after he failed to get the one my friend wanted, and it was quickly apparent I had a quicker hand. LOL

Corvidae, glad those babies hatched even though they hadn't been locked down proper time length. After that crushed egg hatched, my faith in those babies living no matter what is huge.

 

[La Casa de Pollo]

It must be with Easter coming..today at IFA here it was crazy too! There were probably 20 groups/families trying to buy chicks at once while I was in there, and the brooders were pretty sparse, not much of a selection left. Bad day to go in there!

I suppose it IS better than the negligence I usually see at CAL ranch. Our IFA's (north and south in Logan)do take pretty good care of the chicks. At least you know they should be relatively healthy and un-handled But the one lady makes me have anxiety lol

Ugh. Dead chicks in brooders is NOT ok. So sad!