Our second round of hatching eggs in an incubator came to an end last Saturday with the hatching of 7 new Buff Orpingtons! I caught quite a bit on our little handheld camera (sorry the picture quality isn't better.)
We started with 18 eggs of which some I knew weren't fertile. I just wasn't sure which ones they were. We have mostly Buff Orpington hens and a BO rooster. We also have 3 Barred Rock hens that our rooster refuses to mate with. He won't mate with any of the other hens either....unless they are a Buff Orpington. How in the world can a rooster be so picky?? Anyway, the Barred Rock eggs look JUST like the BO eggs so I knew that I would have some infertile eggs. I must have been bad at collecting because we started with 18 eggs and on day 7 I threw out 10 of them. I had candled all of them on day 4 and then again on day 7. The eggs that were clear got tossed and we ended up with 8 fertile, growing chicks!
7 of the 8 eggs hatched. Here are the girls and boys in their temporary brooder which is currently sitting in our bathroom.
I feather sexed them on day 2 and it looks as though we have 4 cockerels and 3 pullets. Once I get a handle on my chick situation, I should be able to move these babes out into the garage. I currently have 8 chicks out in the coop that are almost fully feathered, under a light and 10 chicks and 1 duckling in our garage under several lights.
It's chick-mania here!
We started with 18 eggs of which some I knew weren't fertile. I just wasn't sure which ones they were. We have mostly Buff Orpington hens and a BO rooster. We also have 3 Barred Rock hens that our rooster refuses to mate with. He won't mate with any of the other hens either....unless they are a Buff Orpington. How in the world can a rooster be so picky?? Anyway, the Barred Rock eggs look JUST like the BO eggs so I knew that I would have some infertile eggs. I must have been bad at collecting because we started with 18 eggs and on day 7 I threw out 10 of them. I had candled all of them on day 4 and then again on day 7. The eggs that were clear got tossed and we ended up with 8 fertile, growing chicks!
7 of the 8 eggs hatched. Here are the girls and boys in their temporary brooder which is currently sitting in our bathroom.
I feather sexed them on day 2 and it looks as though we have 4 cockerels and 3 pullets. Once I get a handle on my chick situation, I should be able to move these babes out into the garage. I currently have 8 chicks out in the coop that are almost fully feathered, under a light and 10 chicks and 1 duckling in our garage under several lights.
It's chick-mania here!
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8 comments:
SO cute! I am SO glad you posted this...I take the egg turner out of our incubator today and we should see hatching by Sunday. We are excited to see what we get. :) I don't care, hen or cockerel at this point, we need the meat and really don't need many hens. Either way, we are excited!
Enjoyed the videos very much. Bet the first time you did this it was very hard not to stick you finger in and "help". You are indeed in full poultry mode this spring.
That was fun! We were only able to see 1 of our chicks hatch~the rest made their appearances while we were sleeping! It never ceases to amaze me how amazing our God is!!!
I think I'm going to attempt another turkey hatching. Our chocolate hen is sitting on a huge clutch in the middle of the blackberry patch~right near where our Lucy was killed. You'd think they would just know not to lay there!
What a fun thing to see! I will show my kids these videos when they get home from school. They will love to watch the chicks pop out of their shells and then see them all fluffy a few days later.
Thanks for taking the time to film this wonderful event and share it!
MGM
So cute! Thanks for sharing - my kids loved it!
Can't wait to see them all. I love the chick videos. I've never seen a chick hatch before. Very cool!
How fun! Thanks for sharing the videos. The little chicks are so cute!
cool! thank you!!
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