I do love them but the need a pond and how do I tell if they are girls. The yellow one gets nervous
How old are they now? At 4 weeks old, the girls will start quacking. The boys continue to make peeping sounds.
People were talking about candling the eggs all the time, but you don't want to do that because it releases too much heat and moisture from the incubator so you should really only candle on certain dates. I do candle, but it is just not all the time. This was a huge effort on my part because I wanted to candle every day.
My incubator restores temperature and humidity quickly, as well. So much so that my husband suggested I candle the eggs every day. I told him that I was trying not to because I am new to incubating, and I was following the advice of others, who have more experience than I do. I did experiment with half of my eggs being washed and half unwashed with any debris removed. The washed eggs started to develop, but they never hatched. Well, one did, but that one died. These were guinea keets, not chickens. I did get 17 keets out of incubation so 4 of my unwashed eggs did not hatch. Those happened to be eggs that sat longer prior to incubation. The rest of the eggs had two that were infertile, and there were 12 washed eggs that did not hatch. It is a learning process.
Just don't run into anything with it. Those front bumpers are expensive.
I have two Polish right now that I am hoping are a male and female. There has been no crowing yet, but one has a more pronounced V shape to its head feathering so I am hoping it is a male. I bought the incubator for the Polish and Cochins that I more recently purchased. I also just bought week old Seramas. They are so small. I had four, but one had a slight tilt to its head since I got it. It just acted off compared to the others. Regretfully, it died today at two weeks old. I will not be washing any more eggs. I will just be wiping off the debris.
