Are you constantly watching the eggs? LOL When is the hatch date?
How's it going, Rita?
That's right, build the tension!
Hee, hee, hee. I have to constantly watch as I have to turn them myself. No turner. I turn them at 12, 4, 8, 12 and then as close to 4AM as I wake up and then I always wake up AGAIN afew hours later and turn then again. I am not settling my clock or disrupting my sleep patterns, I am just doing the turning when I wake up anyway. Nothing new, I can't sleep for any long time without waking up but I go back to sleep.
I have read to candle at 8, 10 or 11 days so I am going to try and candle at 8 days as I have no idea what I am doing and figgure I can then try at 10 days also and maybe figgure something out. Lots of different thoughts as to when to first candle as the best day. Somewhere between 8 to 11 days. 8 days will be Sunday evening. So I will try Sunday and report my findings.
Honestly, I don't know what to expect. The Humidity in the incubator is ALL over the place. If I put water in the one tray like they say for the first 18 days it keeps the humidity way over 50%. If I run it dry, humiduty ranges from 30% to 40% some days but other days higher. Like yesterday and today the humidity in there with only afew drops of water is 55%. There is no way to make it less as Long Island is very humid in the summertime. I of course looked up the air humidity and it is high the past two days.
So I am learning as I go. I really should be learning on "junk" eggs, not these that I really, really want but as I said, I could not resist theses as soon as I saw them. Expected hatch date at 21 days is Octobger 9th.
That's great Rita. I can't wait to hear how this turns out.
I was so excited with the first eggs I bought and put under my hen. She was so faithful to sit there, I felt sorry for her. Sure enough, right on the 21st day they started hatching. It's really an awesome experience.
I've never done the incubator thing. Not saying I never will, but haven't so far.
Well, you all know I obsessed over this for a long time. To get chicks or to get eggs. I finially decided that hatching was the way for me. I like the idea of hatching and it is more appealing to me than to just buy chicks. This is probably due to my having been a breeder of many, many, many different types of animals in my life so it feels right to me. Plus it is easier to get hatching eggs shipped in rarther than lots of chicks that just don't seem to fit in with the way I want to do things.
Maybe if I have no sucess I might start to feel differently but now I don't think so. I can just get hatching eggs and keep trying until I get it right.
October 9th sounds like a good Birthday for your new chicks LOL. I looked at incubators but decided against it. The chance for a large number of roos, that I can't keep, isn't a good idea since I get too attached to them! I'll just have fun watching and hearing about your hatching experience. Go Rita!!
Annie we are so alike on the roosters. At least it's good to know I'm not the only one.
I keep telling myself I can sell them, but I don't know if I actually could or would. Already I have seven housed that I do not want or need. Chickens can live to be fifteen years old I think I read. That's a long commitment.
Now I have this pretty white pair that I want to breed... but then there are the roosters to deal with.....
Looks like everyone has a different take on extra roosters. Many seem to be very practicle about it and the roosters end up as chicken dinner. The other end of it is keeping them for pets like that even if you have no use for them. Then again, many people just try to give them away.
Around here there are people of every ethic backround you could think of. I doubt very highly if anything given away on something like Craigslist locally would be ment for a flock of chickens. Rather would be ending up in the stewpot.
Tonight will be day eight. Not sure if I will candel tonight or wait until day ten. Probably will not be able to wait the two extra days and will be impatient to see if I can see anything. I will keep everyone updated on what I find.
NYRita: just remember that although candling is interesting and fun (not to mention difficult), it is a disruption to their development and puts them at additional risk. I personally would advise waiting as long as you can stand to wait. Actually I'd really advise not candling at all, but I know that curiosity trumps practicality....
Susan
I actually am not really big on the idea of lots of candeling. I am agreement that it can not be really good for them. But this is my first time and I do need to see if there is any development. That is if I actually can see anything in dark eggs. Will see if I can stand to wait.
11 Roosters, yikes :-((
I managed to resist and not candel tonight. Maybe tomorrow, maybe not. We will see. I am haveing lots of curiosity so will not be able to hold off too long.
Good Luck NYRita!!! We are both going to be Mommies again in October!!!!
I know it is 50-50 in the long run but with the luck of the draw I guess anything can happen in any given batch. I personally only wish that I can tell the roosters quickly as they will not be sticking around. As soon as I am sure, any roosters will be gone.
I hope all goes well for us want to be chicken mommies LOL :-))
With Cuckoo Marans, you can distinguish the roos from the pullets almost immediately. With Salmon Faverolles, you can tell when they first start to feather out. With Ameraucanas you are lucky to know before the darn roos decide to start crowing. .
If you go to feathersite.com you will find pictures of the differences between the colorings on chicks for any breeds when those colorings will in fact determine sex.
Susan
I belong to the Atlanta Poultry Meetup group, Conyers/Eastside . We have monthly meetings where we discuss everything Chicken. Our Leader and Mentor Andy"The Chicken Whisperer", has his own radio program every weekday, just google "Chicken Whisperer"! and" Meetup" , then enter Chicken groups.
Any Who ....we have been arranging MeetUps and Chicken swaps all over upper Georgia. Next month we have a swap in Conyers (just east of Atlanta) where I hope to either sell or swap out a fewof my roosters that came off my last incu hatch 3 months ago. They are soooooooo prett....er handsome. BLRWyandotte Buff Orp. crosses. Gonna be Big old Fellas! The little pullets will join my henhouse gang and lay some pretty brown eggs for me soon!!!
Most of my breeds of interest you can't tell the boys and girls apart really quicky. Or at least I don't think so. I have Black Copper Marans eggs in the incubator right now and I have no interest at all in any of the other Marans colors. The olive eggers in there too are just fancy easter eggers so I doubt there will be any easy picking out of roosters.
I really, really like the looks of the black coppers. Since I can't keep roosters (and most of a flock is hens anyway) I base my pick of pretty looks on what the girls look like. Black Copper Marans hens are really pretty. And then there are those fabulous eggs :-))
I couldn't stand it anymore. I had watched the y tube videos of what one should see upon candeling so I had an idea of what to look for. So I tried the candeling tonight. Nothing. There is nothing there. Some of the eggs I could see all the way into and some the shells in the middle were too dark so you could only see the ends.But there was nothing that looked like development in anything I saw.
I am really depressed. I know that the first time is probably the hardest as there is such a learning curve but I am still bummed. This seller has an excellent hatch rate on her shipped eggs so it has to be me and doing something wrong.
I did it following the directions on the Genesis 1588 and filled this first trough like they said. Ran it like that for 4-5 days until the measure the humidity thingy arrived. Found it to read 85% and slowely got it down and fuggured out how to keep it at between 30-40%. (no water or only afew drops). But my humidity has been all over the place on this.
Next time I am going to ignore instructions and use a prety much dry hatch method. I also just ordered the turner so I would not have to be constantly opening the incubator.
I will leave the eggs for afew more days just to be sure. But it doesn't look like I will be having any sucess.
I will not be quitting. I will try again. I will have to buy shipped eggs again of course as there is no other way for me to get hatching eggs.
Sometimes if the eggs are slammed real hard in shipping it disturbs them too.
Don't give up yet, maybe they are okay. Since I've never candled I can't say.
Girrrrrl, Hold tight! I just had a quicky course in candeling from some friends who attended the Ag dept. course. They said if you cant see anything but a blur in the middle of the egg and light doesnt pass through, well that should be the developing embryo.
I am in agreement with the others ... just do not candle any more!!! Let nature take its course , as best she can in an incu, and cross your fingers! I am sending you positive vibes and wishes!!! WE will Have Great Hatches.....YES!
Gosh I wish I had taken an actual course in real life candeling. Instead I am basing my infor on Y tube videos. Not knocking the videos, they are more than I would have known if I hadn't seen them.
I was thinking last night after the candeling and after I posted here. I based my statements that my eggs are not developing based on my compairing what I could see to what I was seeing on the videos. Mine were just not looking like those at all. But they were all candeling light eggs. Not the dark ones I am trying to do. So many I just couldn't see thru those middles at all.
Strangely there is one egg which is one of the very darkest if not THE darkest, were I could see the entire insides just glow from the candeling light. I had candeled before setting and it looked exactly like that at setting. There is nothing in that one of that I am 110% sure. But I put it back in the incubator anyway for a compairison. On the others I am waiting because while I feel it doesn't look good, I am not really sure. I need to give it time to see if anything possibly changes. I need to be sure.
I plan to crack open these eggs if they do not develop to see what I can learn. But not ready to do that. I would be just past upset if I cracked an egg to find things were going well and I killed it. So I wait.
.... and we wait!!!
New developments LOL! See my I Bought Hatching Eggs Thread for further crazy ideas of mine :-))