Nerds With Birds

In The Inky: The inky-bator cam is off-line right now

Click here to check out the inky-bator

***Check below for video’s of some of our birds hatching***

The Chickens:

We have the 3 chickens. We bought them from the local hatchery (Estes) on 2/7/07 (the day they actually hatched!) I bought 3 chickens and each should lay a different color egg *L* The Aracuna - green/blue eggs, The Barred Rock - brown eggs, The Leghorn - white eggs. So it will make telling them apart really easy. They are doing really good and look like chickens now. The kids love to go out and feed them cheerios but the chickens are usually to busy eating grass and catching bugs in addition to their regular food to really care about cheerio’s. The first egg was on 7/24/07 and was laid by the rock and I now think she is a double yolk layer. I figure the others will follow soon. It should be easy to tell who laid what this year. So I decided to make a chart just to see how their production is this year. They still don’t have names yet - any idea’s?

(apparently I am awful at keeping track *L*)

The Quail:

The quails have all hatched and grown up. We started out with 128 Jumbo Coturnix quail eggs and they were scheduled to hatch on 5/21/07 - and they started hatching 5/20. Well to be fair only like, 5 hatched before midnight so the majority did hatch on the scheduled day *L*. First Batch - Final count: 77 Hatched, we’ve had a few get loose, a few got eaten by the neighbors dog, and we’ve eaten a few so the flock is ever changing in numbers. Currently we have 9 Males and 18 Females as of 8/15/07. They are doing good in the pen outside. Making a bit of noise and a ton of poop. We colored the first 8 that hatched but the only one who kept their color was the first one that hatched - the green one but even that one wore off within a few days. They can all fly but most of them prefer to hop - which is an interesting sight. They are all grown now, and started laying eggs on 7/3/07 and we had our first double yolk egg on 7/14/07. We decided to attempt our own hatch with all eggs coming from our birds. I started collecting the eggs for the inky on 7/28/07 and labeled each one so we could keep track. We put them in the turner until we had 120 eggs then we stuck them all in the inky on 8/7/07. We estimated the hatch for 8/24/07 and had 7 birds hatch out that day. They started piping at 1pm and by midnight we had 7. We sold off several of those birds. As of 6/7/08 we have 8. We’ve had some get out, the neighbors dog ate some and since that happened they haven’t laid any eggs. At this point I’m not sure we will replenish our stock of quail until next year.

Want to see one of the quail hatching?
(The 1st is from 5/20/07 and the 2nd from 8/24/07)

The Ducks:

On 10/27/07 we acquired 3 muscovey ducks. Right now they share a pen with with the chickens. Cody has claimed these ducks for his own and refuses to let Jay eat them *LOL* on 5/31 we added 6 more (5 were hatched on 5/30)

The Pigeons:

Jay bought 4 roller pigeons on 9/29/07. They are sharing space in the quail pen. So far we have 1 pair that have mated, laid eggs and hatched out 2 baby pigeons on 10/29/07. Gosh they the UGLIEST birds I have ever seen! We bought another roller pigeon on 10/27/07 (black & white) hoping it would pair up with one of the others but so far - nothing. Well we have another set of baby fugly birds that hatched 1/20/08 and we’ve lost 1 of our adult birds, So we have a total of 8.

We’ve Got 2 Eggs! Day 1

Day 3 1 week old

OK so note to self…Chickens & Baby Pigeons = disaster. No more baby pigeons :(

If you want to see our old blog (Yes, I know it’s missing the pictures) from last years hatch(s) you can check it out by clicking here.