July Hatch-a-Long (including 4th of July hatch-a-long)

[Motojeff]

I’m a little late to post, just saw this thread this morning didn’t even know what a hatch a long was been reading some other threads looks like fun.

I have never hatched anything but am not new to chickens I just always raised from day olds I got at the feed store. This year after not having any birds for about 8 years I grabbed some bogo chicks 6 total at the farm supply chick days back in March, and raised them and I think I am getting the chicken math? Built a cool huge cattle panel style coop with some inspiration from some posts here, and Now that they are almost ready to lay in about a month or so I hope, I decided I would try my hand at hatching some.

So I was rummaging around in my parents basement and they had an old joe freed’s brooder / intensive care unit with a wompy broke down egg turner that was manufactured to fit in the brooder and they also had a basic little giant still air incubator that they used about 15ish years ago to hatch cockatiels.

I took them home and I fixed up the freed’s brooder, got the egg turner rocking and rolling again. Mice chewed the cord off,I rewired it nicely. The dividing acrylic egg separating slats are mostly all broke so I fixed a cut up to vent egg carton to fit in the roller. I let the freed’s brooder and roller run for about a week to make sure it was stable and also did the same with the little giant that is my back up plan in case we have issues with the joe freed unit.

While testing the new gear in the shop we started searching for hatching eggs, I bid on some nice looking crested cream legbars from an eBay seller in Northern California. We live in Boring Oregon, yes that’s a real place with a post office and everything not far from Portland. So I wanted to be sure for my first round, that if I was getting eggs shipped I wanted them to be somewhat close to reduce rough handling and long ship times. I got out bid on the legbar eggs after a lengthy battle but then received a great offer from some barnyard mix eggs on my watch list From a seller in central Oregon just on the other side of the mountain from us. She has some Marans, some polish, some legbar, frizzle mixes and that sort of thing so I took the deal 29$ shipped. At around 10am on Wednesday the 10th, and on Thursday the 11th at 3pm or so usps showed up with a very nicely packaged 14 eggs the seller was only around 200 miles away, but that was still lightning fast!!

I let them set until about 10pm Set them in the joe freed box and didn’t start rocking them until around noon on the 12th, all the air cells looked great I’d say for shipped eggs when we received them. One was sorta saddled, another egg had a wrinkle or something more on those later. The freed brooder is chugging along like a reliable old pickup truck and the eggs are rocking and rolling. Temps are stable in the 99.5 range humidity around 50%.

Grabbed my flashlight last night to give a quick peep and it’s looking like I have 8-10 that are developing as they should. The saddled egg straightened out, the one ugly egg with the wrinkle or it looks like a crack but you can only really see it when candled not really a crack but looks to have a blood ring see attached image. Couple of them are to dark to really see anything, and there are another couple that are still pretty clear but we will check again in about a week.

So far it’s looking like if all goes well we should have some hatching happening around the 4th of July!

 

[kelseyk]

I’m a little late to post, just saw this thread this morning didn’t even know what a hatch a long was been reading some other threads looks like fun.

I have never hatched anything but am not new to chickens I just always raised from day olds I got at the feed store. This year after not having any birds for about 8 years I grabbed some bogo chicks 6 total at the farm supply chick days back in March, and raised them and I think I am getting the chicken math? Built a cool huge cattle panel style coop with some inspiration from some posts here, and Now that they are almost ready to lay in about a month or so I hope, I decided I would try my hand at hatching some.

So I was rummaging around in my parents basement and they had an old joe freed’s brooder /intensive care unit with a wompy broke down egg turner that was manufactured to faith in the brooder and they also had a basic little giant still air incubator that they used about 15ish years ago to hatch cockatiels.

I took them home and I fixed up the freed’s brooder, got the egg turner rocking and rolling again. Mice chewed the cord off,I rewired it nicely. The dividing acrylic egg separating slats are mostly all broke so I fixed a cut up to vent egg carton to fit in the roller. I let the freed’s brooder and roller run for about a week to make sure it was stable and also did the same with the little giant that is my back up plan incase we have issues with the joe freed unit.

While testing the new gear in the shop we started searching for hatching eggs, I bid on some nice looking crested cream legbars from an eBay seller in Northern California. We live in Boring Oregon, yes that’s a real place with a post office and everything not far from Portland. So I wanted to be sure for my first round, that if I was getting eggs shipped I wanted them to be somewhat close to reduce rough handling and long ship times. I got out bid on the legbar eggs after a lengthy battle but then received a great offer from some barnyard mix eggs on my watch list From a seller in central Oregon just on the other side of the mountain from us. She has some Marans, some polish, some legbar, frizzle mixes and that sort of thing so I took the deal 29$ shipped. At around 10am on Wednesday the 10th, and on Thursday the 11th at 3pm or so usps showed up with a very nicely packaged 14 eggs the seller was only around 200 miles away, but that was still lightning fast!!

I let them set until about 10pm Set them in the joe freed box and didn’t start rocking them until around noon on the 12th, all the air cells looked great I’d say for shipped eggs when we received them. One was sorta saddled, another egg had a wrinkle or something more on those later. The freed brooder is chugging along like a reliable old pickup truck and the eggs are rocking and rolling. Temps are stable in the 99.5 range humidity around 50%.

Grabbed my flashlight last night to give a quick peep and it’s looking like I have 8-10 that are developing as they should. The saddled egg straightened out, the one ugly egg with the wrinkle or it looks like a crack but you can only really see it when candled not really a crack but looks to have a blood ring see attached image. Couple of them are to dark to really see anything, and there are another couple that are still pretty clear but we will check again in about a week.

So far it’s looking like if all goes well we should have some hatching happening around the 4th of July!

Welcome! On the ebay bidding - are you placing multiple bids on 1 item - like placing a new bid everytime you get outbid?

 

[kelseyk]

With my new hovabator on the way, I am just planning 1 really big hatch to finish getting all the chicken and duck breeds I want instead of drawing my hatches out so long. Might still hatch some odds and ins after that though. Just added 6 Bresse eggs to the line up. Eggs I am still watching....Welsummers, Call Ducks, and Silkie Ducks.

 

[Motojeff]

Welcome! On the ebay bidding - are you placing multiple bids on 1 item - like placing a new bid everytime you get outbid?

Thanks! On the bidding I do both individual bids some times at the end of the auction to see if I might land a win with one more little bump, and I use a proxy bid where it will auto bid up to my maximum each time there is a bid larger than my last to start. I just got to my maximum that I wanted to spend on those eggs. There was a few other bidders, and the seller almost always has a new listing up every week starting around 12$ + shipping I figured if I missed one I could always bid on their other listing later down the road no reason to drive the price way up in a bidding war.

 

[FortCluck]

I’m a little late to post, just saw this thread this morning didn’t even know what a hatch a long was been reading some other threads looks like fun.

I have never hatched anything but am not new to chickens I just always raised from day olds I got at the feed store. This year after not having any birds for about 8 years I grabbed some bogo chicks 6 total at the farm supply chick days back in March, and raised them and I think I am getting the chicken math? Built a cool huge cattle panel style coop with some inspiration from some posts here, and Now that they are almost ready to lay in about a month or so I hope, I decided I would try my hand at hatching some.

So I was rummaging around in my parents basement and they had an old joe freed’s brooder / intensive care unit with a wompy broke down egg turner that was manufactured to fit in the brooder and they also had a basic little giant still air incubator that they used about 15ish years ago to hatch cockatiels.

I took them home and I fixed up the freed’s brooder, got the egg turner rocking and rolling again. Mice chewed the cord off,I rewired it nicely. The dividing acrylic egg separating slats are mostly all broke so I fixed a cut up to vent egg carton to fit in the roller. I let the freed’s brooder and roller run for about a week to make sure it was stable and also did the same with the little giant that is my back up plan in case we have issues with the joe freed unit.

While testing the new gear in the shop we started searching for hatching eggs, I bid on some nice looking crested cream legbars from an eBay seller in Northern California. We live in Boring Oregon, yes that’s a real place with a post office and everything not far from Portland. So I wanted to be sure for my first round, that if I was getting eggs shipped I wanted them to be somewhat close to reduce rough handling and long ship times. I got out bid on the legbar eggs after a lengthy battle but then received a great offer from some barnyard mix eggs on my watch list From a seller in central Oregon just on the other side of the mountain from us. She has some Marans, some polish, some legbar, frizzle mixes and that sort of thing so I took the deal 29$ shipped. At around 10am on Wednesday the 10th, and on Thursday the 11th at 3pm or so usps showed up with a very nicely packaged 14 eggs the seller was only around 200 miles away, but that was still lightning fast!!

I let them set until about 10pm Set them in the joe freed box and didn’t start rocking them until around noon on the 12th, all the air cells looked great I’d say for shipped eggs when we received them. One was sorta saddled, another egg had a wrinkle or something more on those later. The freed brooder is chugging along like a reliable old pickup truck and the eggs are rocking and rolling. Temps are stable in the 99.5 range humidity around 50%.

Grabbed my flashlight last night to give a quick peep and it’s looking like I have 8-10 that are developing as they should. The saddled egg straightened out, the one ugly egg with the wrinkle or it looks like a crack but you can only really see it when candled not really a crack but looks to have a blood ring see attached image. Couple of them are to dark to really see anything, and there are another couple that are still pretty clear but we will check again in about a week.

So far it’s looking like if all goes well we should have some hatching happening around the 4th of July!

That’s quite a great find for an incubator! Welcome to the hatch a long! Can’t wait to see what you hatch out and see pics of the chicks.

 

[FortCluck]

With my new hovabator on the way, I am just planning 1 really big hatch to finish getting all the chicken and duck breeds I want instead of drawing my hatches out so long. Might still hatch some odds and ins after that though. Just added 6 Bresse eggs to the line up. Eggs I am still watching....Welsummers, Call Ducks, and Silkie Ducks.

Silkie ducks??? Never heard of them.

 

[kelseyk]

Thanks! On the bidding I do both individual bids some times at the end of the auction to see if I might land a win with one more little bump, and I use a proxy bid where it will auto bid up to my maximum each time there is a bid larger than my last to start. I just got to my maximum that I wanted to spend on those eggs. There was a few other bidders, and the seller almost always has a new listing up every week starting around 12$ + shipping I figured if I missed one I could always bid on their other listing later down the road no reason to drive the price way up in a bidding war.

I found that I have the most luck just watching the auction until the last 30 seconds and then entering my highest possible bid and not hit the final submit button until there are 10 seconds or less. Occasionally I will put in a minimum bid on an auction I want to make sure I don't miss so that I for sure get the updates - but then nothing after that. I think that with the proxy bids and placing multiple bids on an item, that the multiple bids on an item gain interest and you end up with more bidders and that the constant bidding actually makes the price of the item go higher than if you just sit and wait and strike at the last second. There are a few auctions where someone either proxy bids or last second outbids me, but it doesn't happen very often.

 

[kelseyk]

Silkie ducks??? Never heard of them.

I hadn't either until I ran across them on a Call duck search on ebay. They look soft, but not like Silkie Chicken poof.

 

[FortCluck]

I hadn't either until I ran across them on a Call duck search on ebay. They look soft, but not like Silkie Chicken poof.

Too bad that would look so funny. I’m obsessed with my silkie chicken. She is almost ready to lay. She’s been mating with our bantam Brahma. Guess I’ll have bantam Brahma silkies soon

 

[TheBajan]

THEY'RE HERE!
From eBay I ordered 5 Black Copper Marans (received 6)
From Omega Hills I ordered;
1 dozen Black Copper Marans (received 12)
1 dozen Cream Legbars (received 16 but 1 was cracked)
1 dozen Bielefelder (received 14)

So I have a total of 47 eggs to set. I tried to candle them to assess the condition of the air sacs but I was unable to see any air sacs at all in most of them except for one very badly saddled Cream Legbar. I've included a couple pictures of the different sides of the same egg. Right now my plan is to weigh the eggs so I can monitor their weight loss during incubation. Since I seem to be unable to see the air sacs, that seems like the best way to keep up with that. Then I'm going to let them all rest overnight. I'll set them in the incubator tomorrow morning around 5am. The test hatch I did last month taught me a lot and it was fun to do. After that hatch, I learned how to calebrate a thermometer and so I'm more confident with my temps now. The calebreated thermometer is right on target with the built in thermometer I used in the incubator. I've also learned some tricks to raise and lower the humidity level. I'm going to shoot for 40%-45% during the first 10 days of incubation. I'll weigh the eggs again on day 10 and adjust the humidity as needed. Assuming there are more saddled like this one... what would you do pre-incubating? Also, is the broken egg fertile? It's the palest yolk I've seen in ages but I'm not too good at telling if they are fertile or not.