MY EGGS ARE BLUE - Of hatching Ameraucanas

No, it's is not Easter yet and we have not prematurely painted easter eggs either.

The fertile chicken eggs that we have mail ordered in December have arrived and some of them are blue.

They are from a breed of chickens that lay blue eggs, called Ameraucanas.

Altogether we have 13 eggs of mixed rare breeds plus 3 Red Island Reds.

Considering a hatching rate of 50% with 50% of these chicks being roosters, we are aiming at 4 pullets.

We have:
6 Blue Ameraucanas
3 Wheaten Ameraucanas (my favourites!)
2 Blue Sumatras
2 Golden Lakenvelder
3 Red Island Reds (which I saved from the abortion doctor)

Since we mail ordered them, we let them rest at room temperature for about 12 hours before putting them in the incubator. Just by picking them up with your hands, you can already feel that these are not your regular grocery store eggs; they are definetely heavier. One really gets the sense of how fragile life is.

Initially, Roberto (the doctor inda house) was not interested in the Red Island Reds (your typical brown egg layer) and intended not to put them in the bator. When he asked me about that, my super-sad I-cannot-believe-you-want-to-abort-my-peeps face must have told him everything he needed to know. So, all 16 eggs including the 3 Red Island Reds are incubating. What if these were our only pullets in the whole hatch?!

And then we started turning these babies three times a day; it needs to be an odd number. In any event, this turning thing turned out to not be soo easy. Your hands need to be clean and you need to turn them SLOWLY, leaving them on the side with the big side slightly up to ensure no birth defects.

What can I say? My man is totally in love with my eggs ... Yes, HE IS THE EGG-MAN and I am the walrus!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG73Pk1yUj8

Here is the temperature not quite right, which you can tell by his worried face. It is supposed to be 101.5F. You can also see the blue eggs. After a bit of twisting and turning on the bator ...

So, 18 more days to go ... Let's see who will hatch ...

BTW: This is our incubator ...  

"Nature never says one thing and wisdom another." Decimus Junius Juvenalis
55 AD - 138 A