Going once, going twice…

And sold! I have a dozen Silver Dorkings eggs on they’re way to me.

Mrs Dorking is very unhappy about her move but the incubator is now cleaned and back on as a back up.

Silver Dorkings

There is another Silver Dorking egg hatched in the incubator, we’ve moved the last chicks that were left in our room outside a few weeks ago.

It had become so normal to have one kind of bird or chick, quail, gosling, etc. making a noise in the room that I almost didn’t even realise  when I heard the first cheeping that is was coming from the incubator at all.

A new chick hatching has bought up the question again about whether our bigger chicks are girls or boys…

Silver Dorking chicks are ‘sex-linked’ which means that they have different markings for girls and boys when they are born. I think from the markings that they had when they were born were boys, but now that their feathers are through I’m not so sure as they look more like the hens feathers then the cockerals.

Any way, whatever the two older chicks are, the one in the incubator is the other sort!

White Texas A & M Quail

I started some more eggs off in the incubator the Friday-before-last, I bought 24 White Texas A&M eggs to try and have 11 of my own eggs in there as well. The time has gone really quickly, they’re due to start hatching a week tomorrow.

I’ve only put in eggs from one of my quail houses as I didn’t have a very good hatch rate last time. Out of 22 eggs, 5 hatched (but only 3 lived), 2 dead in shell and the rest of the eggs were empty. When I started to think about it I realized that the male in the house with the most girls is about 2 – 2 ½ years old, which is very old by quail standards. I will see how this hatch goes and possibly do some moving around, I’m just not sure what to do with the old male if it turns out he’s no longer fertile. I don’t want to having him living on his own, but I don’t want to keep him with hens that I could be using for breeding. I’ll just have to see.   

I’ve started keeping a log this time as well, it’s part of my ‘be more organized in 2009’ plan.

Quail Egg Setting

Eggs all now safely in the incubator!

Getting ready for hatching

I’m getting ready to hatch some quail eggs, I’ve been collecting the eggs and turning them for the past two days and the incubator has been washed and is running ready to put the eggs in on Saturday.

It seems like an ideal time of year for hatching now, especially after the disaster of the lot of eggs that I tried hatching in May, all the quail are inside for the winter now so it’s not an issue hatching chicks now and having to have them inside until the spring as everyone is inside any way. There is almost no chance of any thunder storms, which I’m sure was the many problem with the May hatching and if I set the eggs on Saturday hatching will happen around Christmas eve which means I will have a few days off for it but there will be other things going on so I won’t be as likely to keep wanting to have a peep inside to see what is happening.

Some of my current quail are getting on for two years plus now so their life expectancy isn’t that much longer either so I need to be replace them too.