Welcome to my pond - Swim, wade, or sit on the bank

[WVduckchick]

Yeah, California doesn't count. Texas neither.

ETA - forgot to say Beautiful Birds!!

I was blinded by the grass.

Tried to find a comeback for this, but all were way too adult, lol.

x2!

 

[Pork Pie]

Yeah, California doesn't count.  Texas neither. 

 

agreed - child's play compared with my neck of woods

 

[Ravynscroft]

Good morning to you both, from this end 

I think my pullets must have been reading BYC last week. 3 out of 7 have started laying and my little punk cockerels have started mating (well, their version, at least) with my little blue egg-layer e  I gave her a bit of a trim last night to improve the odds of fertility 

for fertile blue eggs soon! And for your home too... :/

Today was my turn to kill my chicks. Not on purpose, of course.

I had 25 high dollar eggs including Ayam Cemani. I screwed up in many ways, and I know better and I am going to describe it here so that just maybe someone avoids making the same mistakes.

I incubate in a cabinet, and have the vents tuned just right for proper air cell development on MOST eggs. I have my best success leaving the eggs in the incubator until either they chirp loudly, or they pip externally, and then I move them to the hatcher. But this time I didn't stagger my hatches well and had turkeys due two days later, and we had a power outage for 8 hours the previous week where the temp dropped and then spiked to 103-104 afterward when the thermostat proved defective.

I moved the eggs to the hatcher before they pipped. It's a still air hatcher and holds humidity really well. I put 22 eggs in, checked the temp, and went to work.

I came home and found the temp at 103 and the humidity at 82. I opened it to vent it, but the eggs were still hot. I had to shut off the heat for a while to let the eggs cool down.

I plugged it back in and it looked good at 99F and 65%. I went to do chores and came back to find the whole incubator dripping wet...a few chicks hatched and released a bunch of moisture. I changed out the liner and saw a number of eggs were pipped. Humidity climbed again, and one pip hole started oozing yellow goo. Uh oh, I know what that means...gorilla snot.

I hate disturbing eggs until after the hatch is over, but a quick candling showed sloshy eggs and no movement. A few still showed hope so I opened port holes.

I lost over half my hatch to a combination of temp spikes and too much humidity. One of the casualties was a gorgeous super fibro Ayam Cemani. No clear or white anywhere :cry

I just had two back to back 100% hatches. What happened?

Moved eggs to early
Raised humidity too much
Too many eggs in the hatcher for the ventilation provided
Temp spikes several times
Chilling newly hatched birds whike trying to save others.

I still ended up with about half of the chicks alive. But they should all have been alive.

May my loss serve to educate others.

So sorry, Walnut!!

Good Morning! I pulled 3 shells from under her, so at least 3 had hatched by yesterday evening. Felt a couple pips too. This was the only peek of a baby that I got.

Morning all!

WV, that is a really cute picture

So sorry about the bad hatch Walnut

My fricken turner for my Brinsea is broken- again! At least not a catastrophic failure like that time, which if had happened now would have broken all of my eggs, but annoying nonetheless. It gets to one point and gets stuck. This same exact thing happened to my 20 turner too. It gets to one point and then the turning mechanism goes slack and doesn't move back. After googling, it seems like the turner clutch may have become worn and needs to be replaced.

I just sent this $#!@ thing in to be fixed in January and they couldn't have fixed that while it was there? I'm not sending it back in again and waiting a month and paying $10 for shipping to have it fixed. No, they're going to send me the part to fix it. They're going to get a rather irate call at 8:30 when they open.

Not again!

I just realized that I just passed 25,000 posts. 

MY GOSLINGS SHIPPED! e
The stinking hatchery failed to notify me so I had to call for tracking

Hopefully they show up tomorrow!

Well, better than 4 months late, lol... can't wait to see them!!

its almost april 

you have green stuff, and dirt 
i have snow, and where its not snow its mud, or frozen mud today 
lol, hope you have a great day playing in the dirt

Cheap oil pans from the dollar store... when they freeze, flip over and ice falls right out and refill...


Neighbor is mowing his yard right now...

 

[FridayYet]

Looks green from sideways at a distance, but it's still mostly dormant.

 

[Ravynscroft]

Looks green from sideways at a distance, but it's still mostly dormant.

Meant to ask, you still want some sex-linked blue eggs later on?

 

[FridayYet]

Meant to ask, you still want some sex-linked blue eggs later on?

I do if you have any when I'm finally ready, but if you need to rearrange pens don't wait on me.

 

[BantyChooks]

To counter all the green....

 

[BantyChooks]

Looks green from sideways at a distance, but it's still mostly dormant.

Beautiful!

 

[Pork Pie]

for fertile blue eggs soon! And for your home

thanks, Rav. Took me a while to work out what you meant - i even forgot to mention it to DW last night

 

[casportpony]

I just realized that I just passed 25,000 posts.

Congrats!