At best count I believe we had 8 (possibly 9) hatch. Right now it looks like 4 are black, 2 yellow, and 2 brown. These little guys are so fast to get underneath the hens that it's tough to keep an accurate count.
We have an assortment of hens including Polish, Easter Egger, White Leghorn...
We had at least one hatch today, went to close up the broody coop and saw that one was now out of the nesting box and on the ground next to the other one (she had wanted the ground and not a box), and there was an obviously unzipped shell with 4 eggs left behind in the box. A quick exposure...
Right now I have 5 broody hens in a flock of 17 +Rooster. I separated off 2 of the hens into a spare coop on May 29th and they are each dedicated to their own nesting box, with 10-12 eggs under each. If any hatch they will be a few days late for Father's Day, but will be a nice bonus addition...
Any guesses on the first pic? It's visually halfway between the known hens and known males (pics 2 and 3 respectively) but doesn't have any noticeable behavior pattern.
18wks old.
Easter Egger rooster crossed with White Leghorn, I have 9 babies at 6-1/2 weeks and 4 appear to be male. At least one is already crowing, is this normal? The father crows both day and night. It might already be time to give away the males
Correct, I would like to slaughter the males.
There are meat maker feeds that state they can be started on day 1, would it be a problem to feed all the birds "meat maker" until I can figure out which are male/female? At that point the males stay on meat maker and the females are separated and...
Day 23 and another hatched 15 minutes ago, with 2 still externally pipped and breathing.
So far out of the 18 which made it to lockdown there were 3 that never internally pipped, and 1 that externally pipped yesterday morning and then quit.
I had one hatch late last night/early morning, and was pleasantly surprised to see another 8 external pips when I checked on the little one!
I'm guessing the incubator is a little cooler than what it states, this is the 2nd hatch I've used it on and the other was a day and a half (or so) late...
Day 21 and no sign of activity since a roller on 19. Hopefully something happens soon!
Update: 40 minutes later and I have an external pip, here we go!