Bumperchicken
Chirping
- May 26, 2021
- 11
- 69
- 51
Hey friends!
I'm new to posting here, but not new to browsing around on occasion as farming/permaculture and rearing animals has been my long-time passion.
We have a tiny farm-yard currently, and are just saving up to build our actual farm on land we bought a while ago in Nova Scotia, Canada. (We're currently in the sunny Okanagan, BC).
I've been raising animals most of my life; rabbits and feeder insects are probably the most relevant to the 'backyard chicken' atmosphere in here but I used to be big into reptiles and I've raised quite a few different birds. Anyways, just thought I'd say hello! Been reading more specifically about quail eggs and hatching as we randomly found a California quail egg (completely whole and undamaged) in the MIDDLE OF THE ROAD while walking the dog, and so I brought it home to show my daughter. (Since it would literally be crushed pretty quickly otherwise.) I thought either a predator moved it, or the quail just was in the wrong place when it was time to lay some eggs. (First time mother?) It didn't seem likely a predator would gently pick up an egg and then suddenly abandon it perfectly unharmed on a hard road, but who knows!
Well, I had no idea it was fertile (it candled totally blank, which I didn't realize quail do, being new to quail eggs -- reptiles have veins right from the start), and I recently just sold all my reptile-egg incubating equipment after a fairly big life change, so we had no real incubation equipment. My daughter thought we should try and hatch it, so I agreed we could try, but obviously not to get her hopes up because we don't even know it if was fertile, let alone if it was alive or if we'd be able to get it to hatch if it was without a proper incubator.
It's funny, because we were thinking about getting into hatching quail eggs next year, but I guess we started the process early.
Anyways, it's incubating in a completely makeshift rectangular shoe box tupperware with some holes in it, that used to be used as a snake transport container. It has one of my daughter's stuffed animal cotton blankets in the bottom, and a couple of jars of water to up the humidity. (It's extremely dry here most of the time.) It's literally sitting on my husband's laptop which is always hot, and I thought 'there's no way this will work'. I've been watching the temperature with my reptile temperature reader several times a day, and turning it by hand. I've been extremely careful not to let the temperature get above 37.5* as we know very well how 'too much heat' is much worse than 'not enough heat', although it most certainly has dropped below what it should and does drop significantly each night (Anywhere from 28-34 at night), so I figured, again, even if it was alive, it probably wouldn't make it through this makeshift incubation process. (Things are tight right now and I can't afford to re-buy all the incubation equipment) I've been checking it every few hours and making tiny adjustments (opening the lid and closing it a bit more, mostly, but also re-arranging things a bit until the temp is ideal) We always err on the si
But, we candled at day 6 and I was SHOCKED to see healthy veins. We candled again at day 11 and saw the half-solid dark egg shape, and then at day 14 (yesterday, the last candling for me since I dislike disturbing the process; I don't like bothering the bird with the brightness. (I keep wanting to say chicken, as we've been calling it our 'chicken'. Bit of a silly family thing since my mother feeds quail in her yard all the time, and we call them 'grandma's chickens'.) And again, we were quite shocked to see a fully formed, very vigorous 'chicken' doing a backflip in there! It's certainly alive and well at this point which I'm honestly shocked about.
Anyways, we of course are still hesitant to be optimistic as we don't know if it'll make it out healthy and alive through the whole hatch, but we're doing our best! We locked it down today. I am keeping an eye on the humidity as I honestly think we might be going too high vs. too low, since this area is so dry. From what I understand these californians actually take a few days longer than the coturnix I was basing my research on (I don't know why I was doing that other than I was kind of just halfheartedly thinking this wasn't going to work)
Oh, 99.5f is 37.5*c for incubation temperature, so it has dropped down around 28*c at night at the lowest, which is 82.4*f. There was one day it went up to 37.8 but obviously that's still pretty spot-on. We just don't want to go over 40 which I understand is the point that's too high. It's actually pretty crazy that this random laptop setup gets up to just right around the proper temperature.
Anyways, long post - Hello all! I hope to bring a few posts about the best methods I've found for rearing certain feeder insects for chickens (and other birds) en masse, as I've spent a lot of years doing this (for reptiles) and found a lot of methods that work very well with very healthy nutrient-filled bugs, if there are people that might enjoy talking about it. I'm VERY passionate about both nutrition (in animals AND in their feed) and efficient natural systems so I hope to enjoy reading and getting to know you guys and your ideas as well!
I'm new to posting here, but not new to browsing around on occasion as farming/permaculture and rearing animals has been my long-time passion.
We have a tiny farm-yard currently, and are just saving up to build our actual farm on land we bought a while ago in Nova Scotia, Canada. (We're currently in the sunny Okanagan, BC).
I've been raising animals most of my life; rabbits and feeder insects are probably the most relevant to the 'backyard chicken' atmosphere in here but I used to be big into reptiles and I've raised quite a few different birds. Anyways, just thought I'd say hello! Been reading more specifically about quail eggs and hatching as we randomly found a California quail egg (completely whole and undamaged) in the MIDDLE OF THE ROAD while walking the dog, and so I brought it home to show my daughter. (Since it would literally be crushed pretty quickly otherwise.) I thought either a predator moved it, or the quail just was in the wrong place when it was time to lay some eggs. (First time mother?) It didn't seem likely a predator would gently pick up an egg and then suddenly abandon it perfectly unharmed on a hard road, but who knows!
Well, I had no idea it was fertile (it candled totally blank, which I didn't realize quail do, being new to quail eggs -- reptiles have veins right from the start), and I recently just sold all my reptile-egg incubating equipment after a fairly big life change, so we had no real incubation equipment. My daughter thought we should try and hatch it, so I agreed we could try, but obviously not to get her hopes up because we don't even know it if was fertile, let alone if it was alive or if we'd be able to get it to hatch if it was without a proper incubator.
It's funny, because we were thinking about getting into hatching quail eggs next year, but I guess we started the process early.
Anyways, it's incubating in a completely makeshift rectangular shoe box tupperware with some holes in it, that used to be used as a snake transport container. It has one of my daughter's stuffed animal cotton blankets in the bottom, and a couple of jars of water to up the humidity. (It's extremely dry here most of the time.) It's literally sitting on my husband's laptop which is always hot, and I thought 'there's no way this will work'. I've been watching the temperature with my reptile temperature reader several times a day, and turning it by hand. I've been extremely careful not to let the temperature get above 37.5* as we know very well how 'too much heat' is much worse than 'not enough heat', although it most certainly has dropped below what it should and does drop significantly each night (Anywhere from 28-34 at night), so I figured, again, even if it was alive, it probably wouldn't make it through this makeshift incubation process. (Things are tight right now and I can't afford to re-buy all the incubation equipment) I've been checking it every few hours and making tiny adjustments (opening the lid and closing it a bit more, mostly, but also re-arranging things a bit until the temp is ideal) We always err on the si
But, we candled at day 6 and I was SHOCKED to see healthy veins. We candled again at day 11 and saw the half-solid dark egg shape, and then at day 14 (yesterday, the last candling for me since I dislike disturbing the process; I don't like bothering the bird with the brightness. (I keep wanting to say chicken, as we've been calling it our 'chicken'. Bit of a silly family thing since my mother feeds quail in her yard all the time, and we call them 'grandma's chickens'.) And again, we were quite shocked to see a fully formed, very vigorous 'chicken' doing a backflip in there! It's certainly alive and well at this point which I'm honestly shocked about.
Anyways, we of course are still hesitant to be optimistic as we don't know if it'll make it out healthy and alive through the whole hatch, but we're doing our best! We locked it down today. I am keeping an eye on the humidity as I honestly think we might be going too high vs. too low, since this area is so dry. From what I understand these californians actually take a few days longer than the coturnix I was basing my research on (I don't know why I was doing that other than I was kind of just halfheartedly thinking this wasn't going to work)
Oh, 99.5f is 37.5*c for incubation temperature, so it has dropped down around 28*c at night at the lowest, which is 82.4*f. There was one day it went up to 37.8 but obviously that's still pretty spot-on.
We just don't want to go over 40 which I understand is the point that's too high. It's actually pretty crazy that this random laptop setup gets up to just right around the proper temperature.Anyways, long post - Hello all! I hope to bring a few posts about the best methods I've found for rearing certain feeder insects for chickens (and other birds) en masse, as I've spent a lot of years doing this (for reptiles) and found a lot of methods that work very well with very healthy nutrient-filled bugs, if there are people that might enjoy talking about it. I'm VERY passionate about both nutrition (in animals AND in their feed) and efficient natural systems so I hope to enjoy reading and getting to know you guys and your ideas as well!
Glad you joined.
Best of luck with the quail egg!
Hello and welcome to BYC, You found an Amazing Poultry Community to be a part of with many great knowledgeable members who are more then willing to jump in and help you along your journey with any questions you may have. 
