About 10 am my mom yelled for me to come to where she was, I walked into the laundry room & she says.. " i am hearing things... I think I'm losing my mind! There is a chick cheeping in here & I can't find it!" Little did she know they cheep inside the egg. She didn't' really watch the last hatch. She drank coffee, only to come to the incubator to ooo & ahh over each new baby. I think she's now hooked. She's been getting up to "check" on them constantly all day.
4 chicks hatched at this point, a couple days early. its all the bantam eggs hatching, today is day 18. Thank goodness I messed up & stopped turning on day 17. I've got 6 more pips as of now. 12 more standard eggs in there that I don't expect to start till Thursday afternoon sometime. Makes this a very long complicated hatch to say the least.
I have 1 buff colored chick with a white skunk stripe down its back, 1 gray blue chick, 1 white chick with black & brown dots of color (dalmatian like) on it & 1 more buff yellowish colored chick that just hatched out.
only problem... i put those bantam eggs in there to sell the chicks to the lady who has me incubating the standard eggs.... I am not letting go of the little dotted one.. or the gray one... idk what I'll end up doing. I do not need more bantams but they are sooo pretty!
hatching has started...
Sending Flan and Coffee your way...
hi
the egg went down to 94 in the bator
do anybody know if that would hurt them
i got it back to 100
i went to bed about 2 and got up at 7
elle
5 more hatched. Up every 2 hrs during the night to check on em. last one hatched btwn 4 am & 6 am. Standard size egg piped btwn 6 am & 8:30am. I've got my three bantam eggs left.. which i believe when we checked weren't fertile. her bantam egg hasn't hatched yet & we've got the 12 standard sized left. Day 21 is Thursday....
ooo! funny story.... I was trying to fix the little coop to put the 1.5 month olds out there bc they out grew the stock tank. Mom was lurking around "helping", had the 15 yr old I use to babysit helping me... well we upset Alice my bantam horridly bc i refused to let her in the coop. She walked & fussed & cried but i refused. She went in & sat on a hay bale in the big coop. The 15 yro was looking at her petting her & made the comment that Alicia "allowed" her to pet her.. which was odd so I went in & picked Alice up. She was sitting on 15 eggs that were hidden btwn the hay bale & the coop wall. SO I've been getting way more eggs than i thought bc someone has been hiding them. I was standing there holding Alice, while mom & her cleaned teh eggs out, some where really buried when i felt something really warm on my hand. not really wanting to look i did anyways. The silly chicken laid an egg in my hand. I had been petting her & she never said a word, just laid there & plop there was an egg.
Any pics yet of the chicks?
Too cute! Alice gave you a very nice gift....you couldn't get a fresher egg...lol.
no they are still wobbly.. i was waiting till later this evening to take pics. Give them a bit of rest. Don't want to over stress them.
Such drama...lol. That is excellent service, when you can train them to lay in your hand. Have fun, sounds like you already are...Hay.
i went in to check the hatchlings... only to hear scratching in the bator.. looked & the same egg is wobbling to & fro as it tries to hatch by making a large hole instead of zipping. i start to walk away bc i must have been hearing things.... a piping egg can't scratch & all the other eggs are still non pipped. I hear it again.. i look & look.. can't see a blasted thing. well.... in the corner right under my nose is a chick who pulled the egg up on the sponge that's in there. Fully hatched, was a bottom pip (AGAIN!) bc I've been staring a hole in them for over an hour & that egg never had a pip we could see from any angle. So... 1 standard hatched & one trying to follow suit. the hatched one appears to be black. She said she had black sexlinks so I"m going to assume that's what it is.
Congrats on the hatch! Hope you get pics soon!
Hi, ellesgh.
Is it a forced air or still air incubator (with or without a fan)? Either way, if the temp was low for only a few hours, the eggs are probably okay.
Generally, early and late in the incubation, fluctuations in the temp are not as damaging. Early, the embryo can go into a sort of suspended animation. Late, if the temp drops, the chicks themselves are generating some heat and can handle the drop better.
hi
still air
thank you for answered
elle
no pictures yet since i am sick. hatch wasn't due till thursday so now its a wait & see game. Have a great day everyone.
Get well soon! Can't wait to hear more about the new chickies.
Yay! Hatching is so exciting. Sorry you're sick, hope you get well very soon.
:) this might make u smile a bit. Clove one of my older hens, 1 yr in December I believe, is broody. She planted herself in the little coop, where i needed to put the toddlers at (1.5 month old chicks) & refused to be moved. She's been trying to be a mommy since December. So... i left her. Locked her in with food & water up high where she can reach it but the babies can't so she can have treats. She's beyond ticked off. She's so upset at me but refuses to get off those eggs. She growls, she grumbles, she cusses me in chicken talk BUT she will not move. One of the kids said the cutest thing the first night she was in there (of course we watched her for half the day to make sure she wouldn't harm the babies), that I was going to seriously make her (Clove) reconsider being a mommy after spending the night with 18 screaming babies. If she could make it thru that she could do anything. The babies were a bit loud, went from a small 2 x4 stock tank to a 5 x 7 coop with 4.5 ft ceilings. no.. nm... they are always loud. They like to talk.
My new banty had the stuff stuck to her feet and ever since I took her in and cleaned her up and let her dry on a towel on me, she constantly talks to me when I walk in the room. I can pick her up and she shuts up and snuggles down.. I love the bantys..
She thinks you're her mama :)
Congrats! Love the hatching game. Can't wait for pics of your new gang.
Elle, good luck with your eggs. The temps in my LG bator flucuate some too but I try to make the best of it. Hope all your eggs hatch.
Those black sex link eggs will not come true. They will likely go back to RIR or BR. What was the roo?
Found out the Roo isn't a black sex link... and the black chick dried red. The roo is "huge & red in color" but that's all they knew about him. The hens are sexlink (if i follow her correctly.. idk that she knows honestly)
her chicks are the dumbest chicks i've ever seen... mean... o they are so mean to my little bantys! and they are clumsy! They walk into everything.
lost two of my chickens today. one sliver laced cochin & Nutmeg... my dirty white colored bantam. its a very sad night. i've hunted for 4 hrs for hatching eggs or chicks that match my group i want to buy plus the two i just lost & keep coming up with nothing. hatcheries are not very nice to small chicken farms! I do not need 25 chicks...... sigh... just makes the night that much more depressing. The local hatchery i was buying from has lost his mind... i went to pick up my chicks i ordered & he just kinda looked at me... they weren't due till May 1st! but he contacted me & told me to be there last Saturday to get them. AND... the dutch i ordered.. he swears he has never had dutch chickens & my little chicken couldn't be a dutch.. when that's what he sold it as to me & another lady. so now i have no clue what my tiny little feather legged baby is. its 1/2 the size of everyone else... so very tiny. i want more of them!
Sorry about your loss. Hope you are able to find what you want.
Oh no, Grey, I'm sorry about Nutmeg. I remember the stories you told about her and the pics of her & her babies. {{hugs}}.
I have to agree with you Grey, I dont need 25 birds I just want a few but the min order is 25 and thats just not fair..
Sorry for your loss.. Want a Duck??
I'd love a duck! but I'm not allowed to have them here. :(
What's worse is the places that allow you to order say.. 15 chicks with heat packs.. will only let you order 15 of one breed. I found 1 place that you could mix the orders up & only an order of 15 as long as you order all pullets, all straight run or all roos... BUT they don't have what i want.
Did you try mypetchicken.com? Their minimum is 3. I don't know exactly what kind of chickens you are looking for; I know you mentioned 'dutch'. I put 'dutch' in their search engine and 3 breeds come up. Good Cluck!!
Good cluck, I love it!
Thanks Loreen. They do not have Dutch chickens but they have some that originated in the area. Not what i was looking for but they do have a few of the others i was looking for. I have to order a min of 8 bc i do not live in a huge city but that's way better than ordering 25! I also found a local hatchery about 3 hrs north of me that has silver laced cochin chicks. So i can drive up there & get some. but then idk if i want Dutch chickens anymore... i found out after much searching that what the hatchery sold me as Dutch chicken wasn't dutch. Idk what Smidge is... but i want more of Smidge. He's super small, feathered legs & adorable! at 1.5 months old he's barely bigger than my 3 week old standard chicks. :)
This message was edited Apr 23, 2010 9:14 AM
Maybe he is serama like Haystack raises. Do you have a pic?
Serama aren't suppose to have feathered legs...not that they don't...but they aren't suppose to.
Oh. I don't know anything about them. I had never heard of them before I met Hay.
Also, Hatcheries don't sell Seramas. :)
I love Smidge! He is so cute!
i adore that little chickie. I want more like him. I like teh dutch ones really well.. but his little feathered legs are my favorite. He's feathered out to look like he has pantaloons on.
I have 3 of Catsy's purebred Dominiques that I fell in love with.. I'm still trying to wish one into being a pullet.
Why is it the Roos are sooooo cute and lovable? I have always disliked the grey barred color.. but these lil tanks are my new fav. :)
Perhaps roosters understand that many of them are expendable so they start early seeing to it that they are among the chosen few.
Speaking of Dominiques: I was looking at some pics on a hatchery site and my roo, Jeffery, does not look like a Dominique. The Dominiques on their site look a lot more white with black but Jeffery looks gray with black. He looks just like the pic they had of a Cuckoo Marin.
He does look awfully dark for a Dominique Rooster.
He looks way too dark for a Cuckoo Marans roo too. Although he does look cuckoo.
You can sex a Cuckoo Marans at hatching because the roo chicks are sort of silvery. Much lighter than the pullets. And they stay that way. It is the same difference in Barred Rocks...although the colour difference is less obvious. But you can usually tell by the roo's diffuse head spot and lighter feet. I think this is true too for Dominiques, although the source I found said you could "sometimes" tell the roo chicks from the pullets by their lighter colour.
Cuckoo Marans have a cuckoo plumage pattern, which is sort of smudgie dark bands on greyish blue. Barred Rocks (which are what my Dominiques were suppose to be) have distinct barring, more black on white. One article said that the bands on Dominiques differ from those on Barred Rocks by being "staggered" instead on one on top of the other. Dominiques also have rose combs and the other two have single combs.
But cuckoo, like barred, is just a plumage pattern....there are many breeds that have cuckoo coloured birds. Maybe Jeffrey is something altogether different?
He looks different colors in different pictures. He is much darker than the pics of the dominiques but he looked just like the maran they showed. He is a mystery. nice roo. Very easy going.
Another angle.
Okay...another difference...Cuckoo Marans have white legs and feet...the other two have yellow!
White legs. I will have to look at him and see. Thanks for the info. He may just be a mixed up bird. LOL Here is a shot of his leg. Looks like he is trying to hitch a ride with his gams. LOL
