Setting Eggs

Getting Ready to Incubate

Well I have been collecting eggs for a week so now they are going to go into the incubator.

On the left, 11 Muscovy duck eggs. In the middle carton towards the back are 4 eggs from a show quality standard bred Buff Orpington named Henrietta.The bluer eggs in that carton are from a purebred blue Ameraucana pullet bred to my pretty Easter Egger roo Earl. The greenish eggs are from Earl and his half sister. And finally on the right, 14 Black Copper Marans. In real life these are about half a shade darker, the flash washed them out a bit. If you have the egg color card from the Marans club, these are all about a #4. If you don't know, that is the lightest color they are supposed to have. They can get much much darker, but it takes a lot of breeding and culling to get there. These will be my first generation of my own breeding so I have a long way to go.

Oops forgot to mention those two little eggs in the middle carton, two silkies, just for fun. Twenty nine chicken eggs and 11 duck eggs. The chickens will be due February 27 but the Muscovy take 33-35 days so they won't hatch until around March 13.

The Girls Moved In!

Today's Eggs

I'm sure you are probably tired of looking at egg pics, but I love collecting all the different colors, sizes and shapes! So much fun!

Add caption

In the second photo I picked out some special eggs, the five in the top semi circle, from left to right are, Black Copper Marans, Welsummer, Buff Orpington, Ameraucauna, Easter egger. The lower three eggs are all from the new Easter Egger pullets.

The girls have moved in

I did finally move some girls into the first part of the new chicken house. Here you can see a piece of plastic rain gutter screwed to the wall for a feed trough and a coffee container has been recycled into an oyster shell dispenser.

Here you can see some of the girls I kept for my flock. The big black girl in the middle is one of my Black Copper Marans; she's not the one that laid the egg in the pictures above. I put her in with the pullets so I can see what color her eggs are but she hasn't laid one yet. (Unless she laid that light speckled brown one next to the olive one at the bottom. If that is the case I am going to be really disappointed as she is one of the bigger hens I have.)

New Colors Today

Pullet eggs

I love having all these new girls starting to lay!  I wish I could get my camera to pick up the color the same as it is in real life. These eggs are more shades of pale turquoise green than what they look like in the photo.

These three eggs came from the pen of Easter Eggers that I have for sale. I don't know who is laying which egg, but they sure are cool looking!

Might be one of these girls or their sisters. I kept about 9 girls to add to my layer flock, but these eggs came from the sale pen. Can't wait to see what I get tomorrow!

Chick Update

Earl Junior

The chicks hatched August 1 are getting pretty big. Looks like there are 4 boys and 2 girls.

One boy looks a lot like his daddy, Earl. And he acts just like him when Earl was younger, kind of bossy and not very gentlemanly. In fact when Earl was younger I really didn't like him much, but as he got a little older he mellowed out and now he's pretty nice.

In the next picture  Junior has his head down and you can see his markings. He might not end up with as much grey on him as Earl, though.

Easter Egger boys

In this second picture standing up is the boy I will probably keep. He is the heavy weight of the hatch and has a nice chest already.

The two girls are the mostly white one standing up in the back of this picture and the buff and white chick hiding behind here.

The white girl has very faint grey and gold markings coming in and I think she is going to be very pretty when she grows up.

This breeding was to try and get more gold and grey patterned girls like their mother because I think she is really pretty. (Well not right at the moment though, she is in a terrible molt right now!) I'll be breeding these three back to their parents when they grow up and hopefully the next generation will give me the color I'm after.

Egg Shell Color Genetics

Easter Egger pullets

I thought it was about time to give you an update on those cute little chicks up at the top of the page. Those are some of the 30 or so chicks that hatched on my birthday in April so going on 5 months old. They are part Ameraucauna, so actually just mutts, but some will lay blue or green eggs. Ameraucauna chickens lay blue eggs and have a small pea comb. Apparently the pea comb and the blue egg gene are closely linked, so in general if they have a pea comb they are going to lay blue or green and if they have a single comb then they will lay white or brown depending on the mix of breeds they are.

single comb on left, pea comb on right

So how do we get green eggs? Well there are actually only two colors of egg shell, blue and not blue. What I am talking about is the color of the shell itself, all the way through. If you open up a blue egg and look under the inside membrane, you can see that the inside is blue also. But when you look inside a brown egg the inside is white (genetically, "not blue"). You see in a blue egg the blue pigment is an integral part of the egg shell. However, in a brown egg the brown pigment is actually a coating put on the outside.

A green egg happens when a bird has the blue egg genes along with some of the brown egg genes. She makes a blue egg shell and then coats it with the brown coating. The shade of green it turns out to be depends on the brown genes and the amount of brown tint she adds.

As you can see there are a variety of colors and patterns on these girls. Some have single combs (and so will probably just lay brown eggs) while others have pea combs (and so will lay blue or green).  Some have great muffs and beards and some have clean faces. Purebred Ameraucaunas are required to have muffs and beards by their breed standard and I do think they are cute. But beards and muffs have nothing to do with the blue egg gene, so as long as they have a pea comb they will probably lay blue/green eggs, even if they have a clean face.

And some of them have begun to lay already!

I can't wait to see what other colors I get out of these girls!

New Chicks

New chick on the block!

Well  I have six new chicks this week. Offspring of Earl and one of my EE girls. You saw Earl the other day and I'd show you a picture of mamma but she is molting and having a bad feather day.

These are some great look little round puffballs.

another yellow and grey chick

Altogether there are five chicks from the Easter egger girl,  three grey and yellow and two red. One of the red ones tho has a lot of grey/yellow fuzz on it's body and mostly just red on it's head and back

The last chick here is from the Wellie/leghorn girl. It is much bigger than the EE chicks.

I'm thinking the grey and yellow ones might be what they call lavender, but I'll have to wait for them to get a little bigger to be sure I think.

Earl Grey, Stud Muffin

Stud muffin Earl Grey being admired by one of the ladies.

Gosh can't beleive it's been so long since I posted. So much is going on with my job, it has been really crazy. Some weeks I have worked 60 hours, barely had time to sleep and feed birds let alone do anything else!

Here is my Easter egger boy, Earl Grey. His daddy was a Lavender Orpington and his mamma was an Easter egger. He has really filled out the past couple of months! You know he is so pretty I might just have to paint his picture!

look at that chest!

Check out that chest! That is a lot of meat on a fairly small bird. He gets that from the Orpington blood. I also love the coloring of his feathers on his chest.

Wide Load!

When he was younger he looked a bit narrow in the hips, but as he has grown he has filled in and is nearly as wide in the back as he is in the front.

Nice and wide, front to back!

Chickens should be wide through the back, for ease of laying eggs without problems. Some of my EE girls are pinched in the tail, so I'm hoping that their daughters from Earl will be wider than they are.

Remember back in March, when all those little chicks pictured at the top of this page hatched? Well here are some all grown up. There are 17 girls and about a dozen boys. The boys are destined for freezer camp and are still trying to grow some back and tail feathers; they are actually pretty ugly right now so I didn't take any pics of them today.

Lots of soft browns and golds, some of their mammas were Easter eggers, some were Welsummer or Welsummer/Leghorn crosses and this is the typical female coloration for those breeds. Some have the tiny pea comb of the Easter egger and clean faces, while some have beards and muffs. The pea comb is the best indicator that a hen will lay a blue egg. The gene for blue egg shell color is tightly linked to that for the pea comb. The girls that have single, regular combs could lay green or even brown. Only time will tell.

Love the beards & muffs!

Now those are some cheek poofs!

I just realized that there is a shadow from the chicken wire fence on that last girl! That's not a real pattern on her.

In other news I have managed a little of progress on the new chicken house. The first section is roofed and I should be able to get the second section roof done on my next days off. I lucked into some great pallets, a full 4x8 feet, exactly what I needed for the bottom part of the divider walls inside. Solid bottom walls are best to keep roosters from fighting with each other through a fence.

Chicks & Ducks Oh My!

Ducklings hatched May 15

My day job has been pretty crazy of late so I just haven't had time to take pictures and put a post together. Here is a little update.


The Welsh Harlequin ducklings that hatched in May are growing like weeds. The are now in that gangling teenage phase and look like little dinosaurs. They are still for sale, so if you are near Globe, Arizona email me at hysong AT cableone   DOT net.

Young Easter egger with a juvenile Welsh Harlequin drake.

Also available are two older brothers of the little ducklings. All of the older girls have been sold except one I"m keeping for myself.

See that Easter egger in there with him? I just love their poofy cheeks. That comes from their Ameraucauna parentage.

Easter Eggers

The fun thing about Easter eggers is that they can be any color and pattern. They are not a true breed, but a mix of Ameraucauna with other breeds. True Ameraucauna only come in 8 recognized colors. EE's can look like anything. The EE girls also tend to come into lay quicker than the purebreds.

Some of these are from two Easter egger parents and some have an Easter egger daddy with a Welsummer mom. They should lay a light olive green egg, although plain brown is also a possibility. The ones with two EE parents will lay light blue or green eggs.

Buff Orpingtons

The Buff Orpingtons hatched in March are somewhat disappointing. About half of them have yellow legs when they should be white. So all the  yellow legged boys will be heading for freezer camp, while the yellow legged girls are up for sale as layers. You would not want to breed from them and get more yellow legs, but they are super friendly and will make nice, light brown egg layers. A couple of these try to sit in my lap or even fly up on my shoulder when I hang out with them.

Easter Eggers hatched May 3

I still have some Easter egger chicks which hatched May 3. These are younger siblings to the ones in the picture above. The boys are just getting their red combs so we should be able to sex them pretty well, at least 75% accurate right now. These are all for sale and if you take the whole bunch I'll make you a smoking deal because I need pen space!

eggs from 6-17-13

I have such fun with my birds and I love to collect all the different colors of eggs! I just wish the camera could pick up the subtle differences in shades in the blue and green ones, they are very hard to photograph!

From L to R: Black Copper Marans, Easter egger, Buff Orpington and Buff crosses, Welsummers.

The Chicks Have Arrived!

Chickies!

Well this was a great hatch this time. I am loving this big redwood incubator, it's keeps the temperature and humidity up really well. If I have to open the door, they go right back up where they should be in a just a couple of minutes. Temperature and humidity are really critical when you are incubating eggs. These little guys hatched right on schedule, the early bird was out early in the morning of day 21, which was April 7. About half of them had hatched by the evening.



I had set 46 eggs from my three easter egger hens, a young Welsummer pullet, an old Welsummer hen and a Welsummer / Leghorn cross. They were all bred by my pretty red easter egger rooster, Lil' Red.

Lil' Red

I'll have to take some pictures of their mammas, I don't have many on the computer right now and none of them very good. I had to be gone overnight and when I got home on Monday I pulled all the now dry and fluffy chicks out and marked them so I would know who their parents are when they get bigger. Now there was one egg that had pipped (had a little hole in it) on Sunday. The chick had made no progress at all in almost 36 hours, but was still alive and talking to me. I could see the chick was kind of stuck and beginning to dry out even though the incubator was at 65% humidity. So I chipped some of the shell off and put it back in. In a little while the chick was able to finish hatching on it's own.

The girls from the easter egger hens will lay some shade of blue or light green. The girls from the Welsummer hens will lay some shade of olive, probably from light to a medium shade of olive green.

Add caption

Now I've been raising chickens for a while and I don't usually go gaga over chicks, although they are cute. But these guys with their little cheek puffs are extra cute!

Not all of them have puffy cheeks, but a lot of them do and some have bigger cheeks than others. The cheek puffs and later a beard are traits from the Ameraucauna breed of chicken, which is what Easter Eggers are bred from.

There is a range of colors and patterns, most of which will change before they are adults.