Breeding silkied Cochin bantams to the Standard

[kurby22]

Individual shots--also a difficult task with so many! I think I've figured out who is who here, though, based on their markings! That's better than last week's babes. My head was spinning trying to tell them apart!

The Black babies:

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The Blue babies:

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Birchen-based Blue:

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I suspect this little one is also a birchen-based Blue, though the light throat patch is throwing me

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Our Splash baby

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And some bonus booty pictures because they're cute

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The attitude here! She says her eyes are up here, thank you very much!!

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This baby is gonna be a looker, you can totally see it in the stance!

And I adore your splash baby!!

 

[kurby22]

Individual shots--also a difficult task with so many! I think I've figured out who is who here, though, based on their markings! That's better than last week's babes. My head was spinning trying to tell them apart!

The Black babies:

View attachment 3539364View attachment 3539365View attachment 3539366


The Blue babies:

View attachment 3539367View attachment 3539368View attachment 3539369View attachment 3539371

Birchen-based Blue:

View attachment 3539372

I suspect this little one is also a birchen-based Blue, though the light throat patch is throwing me

View attachment 3539370


Our Splash baby

View attachment 3539373


And some bonus booty pictures because they're cute

View attachment 3539374


The attitude here! She says her eyes are up here, thank you very much!!

View attachment 3539375

This baby is gonna be a looker, you can totally see it in the stance!

View attachment 3539620

And I adore your splash baby!!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I don't know how I totally missed your post, but yes! She looks very similar to Ottilie (one of the two potential mothers of these chicks) as a chick. I'm not sure how heritable chick down patterning is and I have no idea who came out of whose eggs in this batch, but the first Blue baby pictured also looks very much like Inara (the other potential mother) did as a baby. They're such precious little squirts! I swear they're a little bit bigger every time I glance in the brooder, though! They grow entirely too fast!!

 

[3KillerBs]

Absolutely adorable!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Next set is in lock down now! I have a hen sitting dedicatedly, so I moved some of the eggs under her to hatch as mentioned previously. I gave her the three corner coop eggs, because I'm still hoping for more Splashes out of the four Blue coop eggs for the brooder. I may go ahead and graft some of those chicks to broodies if they aren't Splash, though. Another hen's gone broody, one of my smooth Mottled Cochins, so I have plenty to pick from for the job!

Marka is really changing my mind on broody hens. She's so good with her babies. Not once have I had to worry about her or them, not from the day I put the eggs underneath her. She was, herself, broody-raised, so maybe that's the difference. Or, maybe it's the fact that she's 7 years old so has had plenty of time to mature. One thing's for sure, I will no longer be letting any one year olds or younger hatch eggs, because Athena really stressed me out with her brood to start!

Athena's babes are nearly 7 weeks old now, if I remember correctly, and Athena is starting to lay eggs again. She's not outright rejecting them or chasing them away, but she isn't cuddling with them as much, except for at night when they all nestle together. I have been seeing her distance herself from them quite a bit, too, though they all hurry to catch up to her when they notice she's moved away from them. And I don't hear her cluck for them much if at all anymore. So I think those babies will be mama-less before too much longer. Thankfully, the other adults don't seem to mind them much, so at least they're already integrated into the group.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

2 eggs are drawn down already in the incubator! I haven't checked the eggs I moved under Peanut Butter yet today, but she's sitting tight and they were doing fine last night.

I forgot to mention as well, but in the interest of hatching plenty of corner coop chicks to pick from, I set three eggs last weekend. The only three laid in that coop in the two weeks leading up to that weekend. But all three have signs of life in them as of me peeking yesterday, so at least there's a few more chicks on the way out of them.

 

[kurby22]

2 eggs are drawn down already in the incubator! I haven't checked the eggs I moved under Peanut Butter yet today, but she's sitting tight and they were doing fine last night.

I forgot to mention as well, but in the interest of hatching plenty of corner coop chicks to pick from, I set three eggs last weekend. The only three laid in that coop in the two weeks leading up to that weekend. But all three have signs of life in them as of me peeking yesterday, so at least there's a few more chicks on the way out of them.

I don't know how you are able to keep track of all your different eggs from different chickens! I did two hatches with mixed eggs and I'm certain I mixed up some of them even with the bags to hatch in and bands on the legs!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I mark the eggs for their coop as I collect them and try to only set eggs from a single coop within a given week so that all the chicks hatching in the incubator in a week are from the same coop. I kind of broke that rule with the ones hatching this weekend, but thankfully I have broodies to save me from myself. Broodies always only get batches of eggs from the same coop, too, of course. That in combination with leg bands color-coded to the coop the chicks originated from has been my method for knowing who's who so far. I don't know how I'd do it on a larger scale, though! This method kind of gives you a hard limit of however many eggs are laid in the chosen coop that week, and of course some of my coops are not performing as well as others in that department.

Edited to fix a slight error in wording!​

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

First air breather!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

AAAAAAAA!!!

Ahem... I am very pleased again.

Another one has externally pipped so hopefully this little one will have a little buddy soon.

The eggs under Peanut Butter haven't pipped externally yet, but I do hear peeping and felt one moving in the shell when I picked it up to inspect, so hers won't be much longer, either, I expect!