Hatch-a-long Black Sex Link RIR x BPR + RIR x RIR, + RIR x Cinnamon Queen, Staggered Hatch 4/12 & 4/20

[Playfulroost]

It's my first time hatching eggs in an incubator. I started 27 eggs on 4/12 from my backyard flock. I have two 3 yr old RIR roosters, 9 BPR hens 2 years old, and 3 Cinnamon Queen hens 2 years old. I bought the RIR from Meyer Hatchery in 2019 and the Barred Rock hens from Ideal Poultry in 2020. The three Cinnamon Queens are from Big R 2020, I think they use Privet Hatchery.
I am hoping the bloodlines are true enough for the RIR x BPR = Black Sex Link. The roos will be black with a white spot on their heads because they inherited the Barred gene from the mother. The pullet chicks will be solid black. The red birds will be pure blood RIR or a RIR cross, so I won't know sex on day one for those.
So I candled on day 7 and only saw 10 embryos out of 27. I was bummed! Only a third of eggs developed.
I made the decision to do a staggered hatch. I ended up removing 12 clear eggs on day 8. I added 25 eggs for a total of 40. Incubator was only designed for 24 eggs so I am hand turning.
All the eggs are light to medium brown so I have no idea who's eggs are who's. The first batch was from my smaller roo, the second 25 eggs were from my big roo. I saved eggs for 5 days for both batches. I switched the roosters on 4/12.
I am building a separate hatching incubator box. I have two adjustable fan heater bulbs made for chicks/reptiles, or I can use light bulbs in light sockets on ends of box placed 5" from floor. I have a digital thermometer/hydrometer inside my incubator, I will buy one more transmitter for the new box. My plans are to make a box 20" x 10" x 10". I have a garden heating mat to place underneath the homemade unit to help equalize the temperature throughout. I will screw house foam insulation inside the box. I also have 6" steel roof flashing for the final lining. I thought that would be easy to clean. One inch dry rice on the bottom will cushion the eggs. I might build a second box, just plain wood chipboard, as a brooder.
I have raised baby chicks under broody Cochins and Guinea hens before. I have raised over a dozen orders of hatchery chicks.
I was disappointed in the low rate of fertilization in Batch 1. But it was exciting to see the veins and dark spot in 10 of the incubated eggs! The other 5 I wasn't sure about.
I will show photos of my homemade hatching box and my setup. I am glad I put the second rooster in with the girls.
I am using an incubator I bought off of Wish in 2020. It had great reviews. I had problems the first day or two maintaining the right temperature. I tried to adjust it, but the temp kept dropping. I had left the styrofoam packing on the bottom as instructed. This means I can't see into the incubator at all, the clear part is on the bottom. Finally I read how to do a factory reset. I had to do this several times after unplugging the machine during hand turning eggs. I have started turning the eggs by placing a 2x4 underneath the incubator. I tilt it up, down and sideways. Humidity here is only 25%. I have been keeping the eggs at around 60%. The temperature is stable between 100.6 F and 99.7 F. Just two weeks I will have some chicks, then another hatch a week later. I staggered the hatch so they would be close in age and can be raised together. I have no idea how many are red, how many are black. I plan to use leg bands to keep track of guessed sex and hatch date so I will know if the sex link works. I will be able to closely compare the offspring from my two RIR roos.
If you are hatching out birds around the same time as me, please join me! If you have done a staggered hatch, let me know how it turned out.

 

[All4Eggz]

Following!

 

[Playfulroost]

I had low fertility on the first batch. I finished my homemade incubator just in time for lockdown. I ended up using foam board for the incubator, no wood or metal. Just tried to use the low 100 watt setting on my reptile heater. The medium setting brought the temperature inside the incubator to 140 degrees. The silicone I used to attach the glass window in the top began melting and dripping. It never dried properly and I ended up cleaning the silicone off the glass and door with alcohol. I got some of the uncured silicone on the living room carpet when the glass kept falling out of the lid...Lol luckily old carpet. I am a crafter so I ended up using popsicle sticks and hot glue to get the window attached to the foam board top. It worked! After over 24 hours I could not get the temperature above 95 F. I had a seedling heat mat so I tried using it under the incubator but no luck. Eventually I decided to cut a hole in the opposite end of the box and put an LED bulb/outlet in. It was rated at 72 watts and got the incubator too hot. I finally found a working LED bulb rated 56 watts. It worked! I was able to get a stable temperature. I cut extra vent holes and sometimes need to open vents or place a towel over the lid to increase temperature a degree or two, but it stays at 99.5 to 100.5. I can't get the humidity up, the fan in the reptile heater is too drying. So I am using my purchased incubator for hatching eggs and using the homemade one for my eggs in waiting.
I figured out that May 3rd was the 21st day. My bought incubator kept temperature at 99.1 F so I expected a late hatch. I only have one temperature monitor, and it's in the homemade incubator. I should have a second monitor by Friday. Out of my first 27 eggs, only 9 went into lockdown. At 5 pm, two chicks hatched and a third unzipped! I have one RIR full breed, one Black sex link rooster and one RIR + Cinnamon Queen. Two more eggs have pipped. The best news is I can tell now the red hens lay darker eggs.
As soon as I saw how low fertility was, I changed roosters. It took a week or two, but now my fertility on the third hatch group is 85%. My first RIR rooster had frostbite, lost most of his comb, and I think it lowered his fertility. Or my hens didn't like him.
Super excited about my very first hatched chicks even if the hatch was low. So glad I had a second rooster, I saw development on 22 out of 26 of his eggs in 4 days!
I was concerned about the health of my two red chicks because they couldn't get their feet under them at first. But now that they are dried off they are getting steadier on their feet. I read some posts saying it was normal.
I did open the incubator briefly to check on them but closed it quickly when I saw they were not dry and two more eggs have pipped. I can see the bottom of the incubator is full of water, so I am not worried about having lowered the humidity. It was at 71% when I added water yesterday, which is a little high.
I hear more peeping, hoping more chicks hatched! I think it will be hard to get much sleep tonight!

 

[Playfulroost]

I had low fertility on the first batch. I finished my homemade incubator just in time for lockdown. I ended up using foam board for the incubator, no wood or metal. Just tried to use the low 100 watt setting on my reptile heater. The medium setting brought the temperature inside the incubator to 140 degrees. The silicone I used to attach the glass window in the top began melting and dripping. It never dried properly and I ended up cleaning the silicone off the glass and door with alcohol. I got some of the uncured silicone on the living room carpet when the glass kept falling out of the lid...Lol luckily old carpet. I am a crafter so I ended up using popsicle sticks and hot glue to get the window attached to the foam board top. It worked! After over 24 hours I could not get the temperature above 95 F. I had a seedling heat mat so I tried using it under the incubator but no luck. Eventually I decided to cut a hole in the opposite end of the box and put an LED bulb/outlet in. It was rated at 72 watts and got the incubator too hot. I finally found a working LED bulb rated 56 watts. It worked! I was able to get a stable temperature. I cut extra vent holes and sometimes need to open vents or place a towel over the lid to increase temperature a degree or two, but it stays at 99.5 to 100.5. I can't get the humidity up, the fan in the reptile heater is too drying. So I am using my purchased incubator for hatching eggs and using the homemade one for my eggs in waiting.
I figured out that May 3rd was the 21st day. My bought incubator kept temperature at 99.1 F so I expected a late hatch. I only have one temperature monitor, and it's in the homemade incubator. I should have a second monitor by Friday. Out of my first 27 eggs, only 9 went into lockdown. At 5 pm, two chicks hatched and a third unzipped! I have one RIR full breed, one Black sex link rooster and one RIR + Cinnamon Queen. Two more eggs have pipped. The best news is I can tell now the red hens lay darker eggs.
As soon as I saw how low fertility was, I changed roosters. It took a week or two, but now my fertility on the third hatch group is 85%. My first RIR rooster had frostbite, lost most of his comb, and I think it lowered his fertility. Or my hens didn't like him.
Super excited about my very first hatched chicks even if the hatch was low. So glad I had a second rooster, I saw development on 22 out of 26 of his eggs in 4 days!
I was concerned about the health of my two red chicks because they couldn't get their feet under them at first. But now that they are dried off they are getting steadier on their feet. I read some posts saying it was normal.
I did open the incubator briefly to check on them but closed it quickly when I saw they were not dry and two more eggs have pipped. I can see the bottom of the incubator is full of water, so I am not worried about having lowered the humidity. It was at 71% when I added water yesterday, which is a little high.
I hear more peeping, hoping more chicks hatched! I think it will be hard to get much sleep tonight!

I wanted to give an update.
I had problems with the cheap incubator I had bought off Wish. My first hatch was 5 birds. My second hatch was 2 birds and my third hatch was one bird.
Out of those I have 5 black birds all with spots on their heads, 2 RIR birds and 1 RIR Cinnamon Queen cross. So I wondered if I had all roosters in the black birds?
Somehow my RIR roosters have a barring gene. So they are not true black sex links. But now that their feathers are growing, the oldest are two weeks, I can tell the boys from the girls on day one.
The girls are feathering out with red spots on their wings. The boys are more of a white/grey. The boys have a bigger white spot on the top of their heads at hatch than the girls. It's a similar look to the barred rocks. The boys feathers are lighter than the girls. Not quite what I expected.
After two attempts to build my own incubator, I bought a 55 egg incubator. I am still using one homemade incubator and the first incubator is for hatching only. So in all I am gaining experience in candling, staggered hatching and even tried one assisted hatch, but the chick was malpositioned and I didn't assist in time. I will probably be overrun with chicks once I get incubation figured out. Even though my chicks won't be black stars, I am happy to be able to sex them at hatch. I will be happy with whatever I get and look forward to many more hatches.

 

[Playfulroost]

Next update. My first 5 baby chicks are over a month old and I can't tell roosters from hens yet. So the attempted sex link didn't work. But my birds are huge, will be great for frying if roosters. I had 5 birds from hatch A, 3 birds from hatch B, 1 small chick hatched from C and zero from hatch D. I was relying on the ThermPro remote temperature device for my temperature. It is a rechargeable unit and I didn't recharge between hatches because the unit seemed fine. I recharged it and put it next to the connected unit. The remote temperature control is recording 76.0 when side by side to the home unit showing 74.3. So all my temperature of incubating has been too low by almost 2 degrees because everything I read online said to go by a remote thermometer not what your incubator reads. I can't return the unit now through Amazon because it's beyond 30 days. Apparently the temperature gets even more skewed when the battery is drained, but fully charged it is off by almost two degrees. So glad I had a canning thermometer with a 14" probe. I was able to stick it inside the incubator to verify the temperature. I spent about $30 for the malfunctioning thermometer. Now that I have calibrated it, I can use it. I finally realized that my hatches were getting worse over time and the battery running down on this was the first culprit. I also believe that the cheap incubator I bought was bad. I have built two DIY foam insulation board incubators, mostly because I already had the material. I added a reptile thermostat that turns the light on and off. I had a reptile heater in one end but eventually took it out. I am hanging two lights off the side. I don't have turners for my homemade incubators so I am using my new 55 egg incubator I bought for $110 off Amazon as my main incubator for staggered hatch (eggs with different hatch dates incubated together). I am using one of the homemade incubator as a hatching incubator. If I run out of room, I hand turn eggs in a homemade incubator until day 7, then candle and transfer to my 55 egg incubator to be mechanically turned until lockdown. I have 16-20 quail hatching yesterday and today, the first time I've had an early hatch. Only 24 eggs made it to lockdown out of 29, 3 were cracked, two non-fertile, these were shipped eggs. I am going to get Black Ameraucana roosters to go over my barred rock hens. They have two copies of the blue egg gene, so I can make olive eggers. This sex link should work. I am also getting Biefelder chickens so that I have a breed that is auto sexing, good for meat and eggs, and lays well in the winter. I have already added 6 Ameraucana pullet chicks and two rooster chicks to my flock as well as four blue Australorp chicks. I can use my RIR roosters over the RIR pullets I am hatching and the blue Astralorps. I have seen photos of the RIR/Blue Astralorp cross, they have a red head and blue body, quite stunning.
My fertility rate is now 85%. It would be close to 100% but I have one hen avoiding the rooster--her eggs are never fertilized.
So I have 26 chicken eggs in hatch E going into lockdown in two days. Hatch G has 28 chicken eggs is going into lockdown in 8 days. I might soon be overwhelmed with baby chicks! Fingers crossed these incubation a go well. I am grateful to be learning from my own free range eggs.

 

[Playfulroost]

A quick update. My shipped quail eggs hatched a day early and I have 18 baby quail! I got Falb Fee, which doesn't hatch 100% true. I also got 8 random eggs, so I ended up with a Schofield Silver, a Tibetan, Falb Fee and a few of unidentified breeds.
Now I know the new 55 egg incubator works! I used one of my homemade incubators as a hatching incubator. I have a good view window on the 55 egg incubator, but it makes sense to use it for turning the eggs.
I'm going to finish up these hatches, plus I ordered another 50 quail eggs to be shipped, and then I think I will be done hatching by the end of June. It's been a mild June here thankfully, but I don't want heat lamps and multiple 100 degree bulbs heating up my house in July and August. I may sell my hens and just grow out my babies. I should have pullet eggs by September, and the quail should begin laying by August. I think I have a RIR rooster from the first hatch. All my first hatched birds are getting huge!

 

[Playfulroost]

THE SEX LINK WORKED! I have finally had a successful chicken hatch. My temperature was set too high, so I am having early hatches. So I will adjust my incubator down from 38 degrees C to 37.5 degrees C. I understand that might help give me more hens. I lost track of the lockdown date and had 5 chicks hatch in the incubator with the egg turner moving. My new incubator has a day counter, but it cannot be reset, so it's of little use. I am keeping track of my hatching using my garden diary.
So I had total of 9 RIRxPBR black chicks. Six had black dots on their heads indicating barring, roos. Three were solid black, hens. This hatch is out of my second rooster, and his genes may be different than the first RIR. I also have 5 RIR chicks and one RIRxCinnamon chick. Of course all my red birds are straight run. I want more RIR hens. I usually harvest the extra roos, about the time they begin to crow, as fryers. Because my birds hatched early and I moved the eggs to my hatching incubator, literally 18 inches away, the eggs got shrink wrapped or malpositioned. I lost 12 eggs out of 27 at lockdown. Nine of them had fully grown chicks inside them that were malpositioned or shrink wrapped, and died before they pipped. The others had quit a few days earlier. I had tweezers, cotton swabs and coconut oil ready to assist, but I had only two attempts last chicken hatch for experience. I did a full assist on 7 piped eggs. I worked on them a little at a time so as not to chill the chicks, working on several at the same time. Then I candled the eggs and saw a chick internally pipped. She was weak and as I carefully unwrapped her, I saw that she had not absorbed the yolk. I grabbed a scrap of baking parchment and tore the bottom off a paper towel cardboard center and stuffed her eggshell bottom into it to protect her insides from getting pecked by the other 14 chicks in the incubator. I prepared the brooder and moved the chicks into it. My little RIR premie stayed another 24 hours in the incubator. I just checked and she's absorbed everything, she's almost dry and she's just attached to the eggshell by her dried umbilical cord. I was worried that the parchment paper would stick to her. She looked so scrawny and weak I didn't think she was going to make it. But she's beginning to walk around and look more lively now that she's absorbed the yolk nutrients. It's been fascinating to watch her develop without the protective eggshell, I feel like I got an inside view of a chick's last 24 hours in the egg. As soon as her cord detaches and she's dry and fluffy I will move her to the brooder.
My first hatched chicks are huge! They are all still in the house. It has been unseasonably cool here, in the 70s but tomorrow will be a high of 92 so I can finally move them outside at least during the day. I am excited for them as well. I will use some 4 foot hardware cloth to give them a separate area in the front of the chicken yard. I will use a tarp for shade and put a pallet on some concrete blocks for shelter until I can build them something better. I usually sell or harvest all my older birds by this point so I can move them into the chicken house, but I want to keep going with this cross since I have finally had success. What a learning experience to do 7 full assists just from reading a blog on the internet. One assist wasn't successful, the chick died after I got his head out and put him back in the incubator to stay warm. But 6 survived. I will take those odds!
I feel like I have been taking a science class! It's been engaging to learn about hatching poultry eggs and breeding chickens. I have learned so much from YouTube and the internet. It's fun to watch something, but much richer to then have the hands on experience.