Fertilising & Incubating eggs

[timmyalex]

Hi all,

We recently acquired "Harry" a very handsome Lavender Aracanna cockrel (as seen below). We have one aracanna chicken "Misty" along with Wellsummers and White Leghorns and a Magpie (not the Corvid ! before anybody says anything). "Harry" has been seen enjoying himself with a couple of the birds and "Misty" has just laid her first egg yesterday. A beatiful blue colour so the missus is well pleased.

Question: When (and not IF) the missus wants to produce from her babies how do we know "Harry" has done the business.? Aracanna's are not prolific layers and "Misty" is young so it could well be days before another egg is produced. I presume we would have to collect the eggs and incubate them as we go along. Right.?

Question: I am presuming the missus will only be interested in producing new "Misty's" but what strange creatures would we get if we hatched say a firtilised Wellsummer egg.?

The Birds and the bees was easy compared to chickens.!!!

[Bramble-Poultry]

Hi

1) You collect the eggs and set them all together as different stages of incubation require different humidities and also it becomes confusing as to which eggs are due and which have gone bad! Eggs need to be collected and stored poiny end down in a cool dry place but NOT a fridge. You can store them for up to 14 days but the older the get the more hatchability will drop. As for knowing if "harry" is doing his job the only way to tell is to set the eggs in an incubator and at 7 and 14 days candle them to see if they are developing. If they are young birds it may take a few attempts to get the timing right as it were!!!

2) You would get and interesting vairety of crossbreeds nothing more - they would be perfectly good chickens as pets but you would not sell them as people would not be interested in them, I'm not going to go into egg colour genetics at this precise moment in time but girls from crossed matings will lay a proportion of the blue egg colour and a proportion of the wellsummer egg colour.

It is best to give them another couple of months together so she gets into a consistant laying pattern, as she gets older and the daylight intensity increases she will come onto full lay, at this point his fertility will also be optimum and you stand a much greater propbability of hatchable eggs. I would suggest collecting a weeks worth if eggs and setting the incubator this should give you 5 or 6 eggs to set. You may also wish to "buy in" 6 or 12 more lavender arucana eggs to set alongside your own, this will give you more babies and introduce "fresh blood" avoiding to much inbreeding.

Nearer the time we will all be more than happy to give plenty advice on incubation and hatching.

Jennie

BTW - he's absolutely divine!!

[CoraxAurata]

You can theoretically tell a fertilized egg by the spot on the yolk - it looks different in a fertilized egg - however this would mean breaking the egg..........

I would recomend only hatching crossbreeds if you are truly prepared to deal with the cockerals! 'Cos it is hard! Unless of couurse you live miles from anyone and the dawn racket isn't a problem and you can seperate cockerals if they start to fight......

Hatching is great though every pipped shell is the cause for great expectations and bated breath, anxiety, pain, releif and general stress and every fluffy chick is irresistibly cute and photogenic! And all the chookie grapes will be holding their breath(s) with you LOL

He is really gorgeous!

[Snadger]

From what I can gather, any hen that lays a white or cream egg when crossed with an araucana cockerel has a good chance of producing hybrids that will lay blue eggs.
Araucanas crossed with darker coloured egg layers like your Welsummer, could end up producing chooks that lay a greeny coloured egg............I think!

[timmyalex]

Hey, Hey, Thanks for the advice - Keep it coming.

By the way. The OH has informed me it is "Arry" not "Harry" as i have stated (A for Araucanna - See whats she is doing there....!!). It's difficult to keep up in this house

[Bramble-Poultry]

When you have 148 of the little blighters all with names lovingly given them by your 10 year old then you really do lose the plot on names!!! I get them wrong all the time and get told off for it too

[its hilly]

I've got a cockeral who is Araucana x french copper or copper black maran
Not a good pic Im afraid as Festher really is quite gorgeous.
I'm doing an experiment. Hes being x'd onto cuckoo maran and maran initially to give good layers (hopefully) with an interesting colour. Then they will further x'd on with other breed added. However as Bramble says they will be worthless as people looking for laying hens usualy want ones who can be expected to lay a good number of eggs and with a first generation x thats not guarenteed. It will be several generations before I will know if I can produce the hybrid I want to. And I've got tons of room to keep them too.

But if all you want is cute chooks for yourself..well..keep us posted, with pics of course.

[petal]

I would stick to the araucana pure breeding unless you are prepared to dispatch the surplus cross bred cockerels. We have a separate pen for ours, and they don't get names but they do get special food! Ha!

[Nicos]

All my chooks were all POL Dec 2008 and I let them brood 8 eggs ( i think!) in the February. 3 of them weren't fertile ...and I had 2 young cockerels.
I'm sure between them the gals were well 'covered' so I put it down to immaturity of the males.
3 of the 4 moms were mentally a bit 'immature' with their basic care of the eggs too.
Wait if you can until the weather improves and they are a bit more mature, and I'm sure you'll get better results!