Baby Buffs

Hi everyone,

We just placed our newly hatched Buff Orpingtons into the brooder house this morning.  Not very easy to see them under the red heat lamp!  We had 9 chicks hatch.  First batch out of the Brinsea, and I love how it works...but I'm less than enthralled with the fertility from my flock.  We placed 22 eggs into the incubator, and only 11 of them were fertile.

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Congratulations! You'll probably find fertility will have improved by your next batch. 3 weeks ago when you collected these eggs there were some extreme temperature swings in our area, so probably in yours too. The weather does seem to have a lot of impact on fertility.

That's very interesting Kathy! I think you are right...there were extreme fluctuations. I've never heard that could have an impact on fertility. I will be collecting in another couple of weeks for the next batch, so that will be interesting to see!

We just brought home our newest batch of fluff balls....20 Buff Orpington and 8 BBS... perhaps all Blues.  I don't really get into the genetic thing, that is left up to my beloved chicken crazy daughter.  Blue rooster over Black hens should equal?????? Many thanks to Fuzzy Little Friend for once again incubating and hatching for us. The temptation to bring home some of Fuzzy's newly hatched Mille Fleur d’Uccles was almost more than I could resist. Love the chick "explosion" in the hatching trays!

Pictures Echo...pictures!  I wanna see the little BBS's!   

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Ask and you shall receive. You asked for pictures and here they are.... Sorry I probably should have posted these in my own thread.

Farmer Bob wrote:First batch out of the Brinsea, and I love how it works...but I'm less than enthralled with the fertility from my flock. We placed 22 eggs into the incubator, and only 11 of them were fertile.

I sure hope it was the weather here. I like how the new Brinsea works as well. I had about a 90% hatch with Black/Blue Cochins and White Chanticlers. If it was just that I would be very happy, but I had about 60 Wyandotte eggs between 2 incubators (the other is an old Hova) and ended up with 5 BLRWs and 5 GLWs. The low hatch may be due to the senior citizens making up the Wyandotte flocks. Cute chicks!

Oh lovely...I love to see the buffs. Blue over black should give 50% of each if I am not mistaken. Where did Fuzzy get the hatching eggs (or were they from her, does she have buffs?), always keeping track of what buff lines are around, should I ever need something too, smiling...closed flock for now, but nice to know what is around. have a beautiful day, CynthiaM.

Apologies to Farmer Bob.....no intention to hijack your post here but it does seem that might be happening.... oh dear! Cynthia, these babies are from our own eggs.  Their dad is the handsome fellow Alyssa got from you last spring.  It's magic...we collect the eggs, take them out to Fuzzy and  3 weeks later we pick up a crate full of little puff balls!  The hens are a mixture of the ones we got from you and the girls from Greendale Farms (I think) When it comes to the chickens, I am support staff. Alyssa does all the record keeping and knows who is who.

LOL, No apologies necessary Echo!  Those are great pictures that you posted!  Somehow I missed them  until now.  So, we now have batch #2.  Same results as before, only 50% fertility.  2 year old rooster with 8 hens.  Rochester Hatchery Lines.  I'm thinking of getting a new rooster from a different line for the hens, and hoping that will improve the fertility in the future.

Here's a picture of wife holding a handful of baby buffs!   

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Adorable! I love the babies..... we are going to do one more hatch this year, a very small one! I must correct one of my earlier posts... the Blue babies are from a Splash rooster over the black hens. Splash guy was RUDE (aka a nasty piece of work) so he has gone to live in the cattle barn at our hay broker's farm. Too old for freezer camp!

Bet all those chicks are happening beautifully, and growing out nicely. Farmer Bob I will have a buff rooster that is one year old that I will be advertising for sale soon. I need to make room for two new boys that will take over the breeding of my girls next year. He is quite nice and I am very pleased with his offspring this year. He is now fertilizing all the eggs, since he only has 9 hens now, others are broody (four hens). I think that 12 hens was too much for him to cover, as he had favourites, smiling. Anyways if you are interested, just putting it out there, he can go any time, take to email format if you are interested, if you are not, do not worry, he will easily find a home. Lots of work done with the genetics here to improve my flock. Have a wonderful day, oh by the way, how bout pictures of the chicks people, smiling....CynthiaM

Oh, splash over black will give all blues, by the way, smiling. C.