Incubating Quail; Japanese and Chinese Painted

I've just popped around 120 Quail eggs into my MS Broedmachine incubator.
I bought 24 Japanese Quail eggs and 108 CPQ eggs but after candling them a couple had cracks in their shells so I didn't put those in the incy.

Due to hatch around the 17th/18th Feb!

Quail chicks...

Obsessed with hatching...

Lewis has gone from broody to obsessed!

I thought about setting a few quail eggs in my incy at Uni, got a bit carried away and bought 40 eggs from a breeder and another 36 from the Organic shop on my street who said they are fertile - they're due on the 21st, Nat's birthday.
'Cos of that and already having 12 bantie eggs in my Octagon 10, I needed another incy so my friend Lee saved the day + lend me his! :)

Then, I was on eBay and saw an MS Broedmachine incy on there. They're the best you can buy, made in the Netherlands and so don't often come up for sale... so I kinda bought it!

Is in Nottingham so ma friend at Uni there has collected it for me and I'll go pick it up.
One of these:

Annie, ma pekin, was on 3 eggs due this weekend but only one has hatched so far - a Speckled Sussex x Araucana which if is a girl should lay green eggs. Not sure if the other 2 will hatch late or not at all.

 Have got ma brooder ready for the quail chicks too (if they hatch)!

Is a Hagen Vision bird cage (like eglu's for budgies!) which has a deeper tray than my indoor rabbit cages so should keep them warm. I've got a big double height one of the cages for ma Diamond Doves and really like them!

Lewis is broody...

I was going to wait until after exams but me is broody, wants chicks and kind of have 4 hatches on the go...

The 2 broody sisters are in a couple of ma broody coops in Tub Trugs!

Annie on the left is on 3 developing eggs which are due to hatch next weekend
Dorothy (Red on right) is on 5 developers due the week after!

Got 6 Call duck eggs in my new Brinsea Mini incy I bought from Cotswold Chickens which are due to hatch in 3 weeks time.

Also have 12 eggs ready to go in my Octagon 10 incy in Aber - Frizzles, Booted Bantams and German Langshans!

May try and hatch some Organic quail eggs just to see if they're fertile, friend is after some more so be a bonus if they do hatch!

Broody: Hatch 8 with Dorothy

Its hatching time again! :)
Dorothy, the Red Pekin I bought at the National has gone broody so I got 6 hatching eggs for her from Tasha.
A Speckled Sussex x Araucana and 5 Pekins... 2 Lavender (from Quigleys girls!), 2 Mille Fleur and a Cuckoo.

Popped a TubTrug full of bedding and the 6 eggs into a broody coop and she jumped straight back on them!

Day 0 ... due to hatch the weekend of 4th May!

Cilla has chicks!

Cilla the Silkie went broody and now has 3 Quigley chicks! :)
They're Quigley babies, so Lavendar Frizzle Pekin x Whichever bantie girls of mine :P

Esmerelda has a chick :)

Esmerelda has hatched her first chick!

The first Quigley baby to hatch here too. Not sure who the egg came from, I guess Mabel but could be Cilla or Alice/Eliza.

2 have pipped!!

2 of the eggs in the incubator have pipped! xD

The Cream Legbar and Araucana
They're not due until tomorrow, so could take a long time to hatch, but its a start! :D

Day 18

Tis day 18 for the eggs!

Hilary's 4 are fertile and developing.

Of the others in the incy, 3 are developing - Cream Legbar, Araucana and Barred Wyandotte!

Have turned the auto-turner off in the incy and now ... we wait

Electric hen

Have finished making the electric hen :)
Cut the wood up, screwed it together and put i few coats of varnish on so I can wipe it down when it gets covered in chick poo! Stuck the heat mat on with gaffer tape. Screwed in the hook eyes.
Sorted
The top, which will be suspended at an angle by chains and hung in the brooder:

The heat mat which the chicks sit underneath:


They use a lot less energy compared to a heat lamp, so less cost, and they're more natural so the chicks can get used to daylight hours etc.
Apparently chicks feather up faster under them, but don't know as yet :)

Day 7: Candling

Have candled the eggs and am a bit disappointed. Looks like a combination of the postman being rough, and my rough incy :P
It looks like 12 are fertile, but not all developing.
A couple have blood rings too, which means they're fertile but the incubator playing up etc, has meant they've died :(

Blood ring:

Have my eggs!

I have my eggs! :D

I have......
4 Transylvanian Naked Necks
4 Silver laced (frizzle) poland bantams
3 Lavender araucana
Silver Sussex
Lemon Pyle or Dark brahma
Buff X Black Orpington
3 Barred Wyandotte bantams
Silver laced Wyandotte bantam
Pekin X Poland bantam
Welsummer X FCB maran (meat bird)
- Seem to be posting the same list everywhere! xD



They won't all hatch (because of going through the post and not being fertile), and won't all be girls either. I'm planning on raising the boys to be table birds, and the ones that aren't suitable for that will try to re-home :)

Mom really wants a 'zebra chicken', Barred Wyandotte, and dad really wants the Oprington to hatch.
I want a Naked neck, Brahma, Wyandotte and Araucana the most ;)

Incy back up

The incy has been back on overnight with the 40W bulb in it and it seems to be holding the temp ok.
Have been adjusting it with a mat over the top and think its in the right place now :)
It does go up + down a bit as the temp of the room changes, but it should be ok *fingers crossed*
Thought about getting a new thermostat or a reptile one, but it seems to be holding ok.

Eggs are being sent out today, next-day delivery, so should get them before 1pm tomorrow :D

Up to 7 chicks

Just been to school to check the chicks and a water pipe in Biology has burst!

The chicks are fine, the one that was pipping yesterday (in the video) hatched, another hatched and there is an egg that has pipped and should be out tomorrow. The one from yesterday and the pipped one yesterday have gone into the brooder with the rest of the chicks.

The Brilley Blues are smaller chicks, and they're meant to be autosexing, but I can't see any difference, and I thought they were meant to be blue chicks aswell :lol: - I'll find out.

Up to 5 chicks

The first Brilley Blue chick has hatched this morning, and there is another that is pipping.

I recorded a video of the chick and you can see it breathing inside the egg :D

The CCL chicks are all fine, they seem to have grown loads already! Fry has already got litte wing feathers :)

Up to 4 ...

The 4th chick hatched during the night and I think its a girl, so hopefully we have 1 boy and 3 girls.
We've named them; Blue is called Fry, Yellow is called Nugget, Pink is called Purkinje and th Orange one is called Pox :)
In the brooder

Purkinje

In Biology

Fry :D

3 Chicks

2 more hatched today. The one that hatched yesterday is a male, and the 2 from today are females. There's still one pipping and yet to hatch.
Some photos:
Empty egg shell:

Arjun + a female chick:
Me + Phillipa:

Male chick:

3 chicks in the brooder:

First chick :D

3 eggs pipped earlier during Biology and then I went on a trip and got back just before 4 o'clock - and the first chick was just out of its shell XD

Hatcher

The polyhatch seems to be working well, and we put the first batch of eggs in at 9am. We went back at lunchtime to check the temperature and someone had turned it off at the wall and the eggs felt cold! The temperature was down in the 20's and should be at 37 degrees :(
We quickly put them back in the original incubator while this one heated up and then put them back in. It was a maximum of 4 hours that they were cold for, hopefully they will be ok.
We candled the eggs and got rid of the 2 CCL infertile eggs and one infertile BB egg.

We have a webcam set up and is running on the school network, but can't be viewed outside school which is a bit pointless as you can just go and look at them, but we're going to have them streamed live on the plasma screens around school.

New Hatcher

I went to school on the way back home from Nottingham just to sort the chicks out. I thought I was taking my incubator in for the first batch of chicks to use as a hatcher but school have managed to borrow one from another local school.
Its a Brinsea Polyhatch (which we used to use at the farm all the time) and they're usually good and hold their temperature well. I turned it on and have left it running over the weekend, hopefully it'll keep its temperature and will be ok :)