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We'll use this area to update you on what we're doing....
4/17/09: Wow! Time has flown by since we set our Marans and Orpington eggs. They started pipping (first little punch through
the egg shell) about 9:30 Wednesday night. The first one hatched about 9:00am on Thursday morning right before we headed to
a Children's Theater performance. The next waited until we got back about noon....how thoughtful--LOL! So far, we have 9 Black
Copper Marans and 2 Buff Orpington chicks. What an amazing improvement from the first hatch! Only 25% on the first hatch but
79% on this one, and who knows we could still have a straggler or two. We will wait until Sunday before giving up and opening
the eggs. Check out the Slideshow for some more photos.
4/15/09: We've all lost our minds! We are expecting hatching to start for the Marans and Orpingtons sometime after 9:00pm
tonight, and we just bought four more chicks at the local Tractor Supply Co. They had a "straight run" chick bin
which means there is no guarantee of breed and the chicks are not sexed (sex of the chick is undetermined). All them were
blonde except for four little black fuzzballs. Betcha' can't guess which came home with us? We think the little black chickies
are Barred Rock, but we're not 100% positive. If we're right about the breed, we're also pretty sure two are roosters and
two are pullets (young females). This particular breed can usually be sexed by coloring and markings, but not being familiar
with the breed, we could be wrong. We'll add the hens to our regular laying flock, but we'll have to find a home for the roosters.
Any takers??
3/26/09: Today, we set 14 more hatching eggs: 11 Marans eggs and 3 Buff Orpington. Marans are a French breed that lay
an extremely dark brown egg, almost like mahogany. We hope to eventually cross-breed the Ameraucana and Marans to produce
some "Olive-eggers" (hens that lay a beautiful olive colored egg). The Buff Orpington lay a nice size brown egg,
so we will be adding them to our regular laying flock to help meet our egg demand.
3/21/09: We didn't have the great hatch that we hoped for, but we do have four cute, fuzzy chicks! Three of them are "splash"
in color--meaning they are spotted with no specific pattern--and one is black. Of course, we have no idea if they will be
hens or roosters at this point. Hoping for all hens except one splash rooster, so we can breed for more splashes and some
blues. I have updated the SlideShow to include some hatching pictures and will get pictures of the chicks added soon.
3/18/09: Today, we candled the eggs again, but--again--I had a hard time seeing anything--just dark blobs with an air
sac at the top of the egg. We moved them all from the turning tray into the egg cartons for hatching, and we are now anxiously
awaiting some little chickies! I will post pictures and/or video as soon as possible.
I've also talked hubby into hatching some Marans eggs, so that we can add some dark brown egg layers to our laying flock
and breed for some Olive-eggers (lay a beautiful olive colored egg). I will be picking up a dozen Marans and about 6 Buff
Orpington hatching eggs on Sunday which we hope to get right into the incubator as soon as the Ameraucanas are out.
3/9/09: Unfortunately, the Ameraucana eggs were just too dark to get any good photographs. We could hardly see anything
, let alone take a photo of it. :-( However, it does look like out of 16 hatching eggs, 7 were doing very well. Another 5
of them are questionable--just couldn't tell for sure--and 4 were obviously infertile or just never started developing. The
wait continues...12 more days!
3/6/09: Well, we made it through the snow last weekend and the past week with no major incubator problems. Yea! We've
been monitoring our temperature and humidity constantly throughout the day and most of the night, and we have achieved consistent
stability in both. We will be candling the eggs this Sunday evening (3/8) to see what is happening. We hope to have some clear
photos of the candled eggs posted by Monday.
2/28/09: We placed our 16 Ameraucana hatching eggs (the breeder included a few extra for me) in the incubator today. Visit
the "Slideshow" page to see the progress of our hatching project.
2/23/09: We placed an order for one dozen pure Ameraucana hatching eggs in colors Black, Blue, and Splash. Pure Ameraucana
chickens lay blue/green eggs, so we are super excited to add these to our flock...even if we won't have blue eggs until the
fall! Here's a great link for information on Ameraucana chickens:
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