Wednesday 13th June 2018
Incubator hatching
We have mass hatching going on. Going back three weeks, we bought in a load of coloured eggs: dark browns (Marans), white (Leghorns) and green/blue (Shetland and Lebars) and tonight they began hatching. The numbers of fertile eggs in each batch varied from 11 to just 5 out of 12!
The full breakdown is below.
The first number is the total number of eggs, the second how many were fertile and the third how many were still growing on Day 18 (traditionally known as lock down day cos this is when we turn up the humidty, slightly decrease the temperature, stop the whole incubator turning and when the eggs start to internally pip). All of these were posted eggs
Copper Maran: 12/11/9
Legbar: 12/10/9
White Leghorn: 12/6/5
Shetland: 12/5/3
Sexlink Future Green: 6/6/6 (These are brown eggs but due to the specific breeding, the resulting female chicks will all be blue/green egg layers.)
We put all 9 Maran eggs under an Indian Game broody yesterday and today have heard various cheeps from under her!! Back in the incubator, so far we have had 7 Legbar, 2 Leghorn and 1 Shetland hatch. The ‘Future green’ eggs are two days behind the rest so we are leaving those be at the moment.
The plan with the hatched chicks is to get them under a broody hen or two as well. We really don’t want to have to raise any chicks ourselves, we’d far rather a feathered ‘mum’ does all the work for us.
Copper Maran: 12/11/9
Legbar: 12/10/9
White Leghorn: 12/6/5
Shetland: 12/5/3
Sexlink Future Green: 6/6/6 (These are brown eggs but due to the specific breeding, the resulting female chicks will all be blue/green egg layers.)
We put all 9 Maran eggs under an Indian Game broody yesterday and today have heard various cheeps from under her!! Back in the incubator, so far we have had 7 Legbar, 2 Leghorn and 1 Shetland hatch. The ‘Future green’ eggs are two days behind the rest so we are leaving those be at the moment.
The plan with the hatched chicks is to get them under a broody hen or two as well. We really don’t want to have to raise any chicks ourselves, we’d far rather a feathered ‘mum’ does all the work for us.