I didn’t post a picture last night after all, but this is one from this morning. It’s not the world’s greatest picture but I don’t want to keep the top off too long or the humidity drops and this might make it more difficult for other chicks to hatch.

It’s just fallen awkwardly as far as the timing goes as they may be hatching over the weekend while I’m not here. Looks like I might have to change my plans.

In theory you can leave a chick for 72 hours before it needs food and water (it still has reserved from the yolk sac until that time). I like to give them access to food and water as soon as practical, which in this case means as soon as they are dry and fluffy.

When I worked for a hatchery (have I mentioned that before?) we used to fly day old breeding stock all over the world and they always arrived OK thanks to the yolk sac. There are very few places in the world you can’t reach within 48 hours.We did inject chicks with saline solution a couple of times just to be sure, but it wasn’t a common thing.

At the moment we have two dry chicks and that is still drying out. There are two more eggs that are pipped and so far that is it.

In breed terms we have two from the blue eggs and one Polish bantam.

Everybody likes blue eggs. I upset someone when we were collecting hatching eggs by refusing to sell them a blue egg to eat (I still only had three to hatch) and someone has already asked to buy the chicks from the blue eggs. I might have to upset them, as I want them for the farm so we can continue producing blue eggs.

That’s all for now – some success but not as much as I’d hoped.

Stop Press: Just had another hatch out. Tried to get better photos but they keep moving and the black and yellow of the chicks merges with the  black and yellow of the incubator.

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