Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

Finally, after several "years" of waiting for my mille's to go broody I have one of my girls sitting on a small clutch of eggs. I have not had much success with hatching via incubator with temp fluctuations this past spring (yes, I know I am using a cheap aircirculated hobivator). Half the offspring that did hatch in the incubator ended up with buggy eyes and ended up being euth. The few that I have managed to hatch have turned out exceptionally nice. So keeping my fingers crossed that her eggs will produce some really nice babies. I lucked out several years ago to acquire a very nice older hen who turned out to be carrying a lavender gene as well, and as hard as I tried, between loosing my roosters and her never taking a like to any new roosters I was never able to get any offspring from her. Success this year as I have 3 very nice young pullets from her with 2 being mille's and one being a porcelain and I also have a pair of really nice lavender birds out of a pretty little lavender cockeral I bought a couple of years ago who has since succumbed to a freak accident. I also managed to snatch another very nice young hen a few years ago again. I patiently waited last year for a young very nice mille fleur cockerel that my old gal liked that seemed to take forever to reach breeding age to start covering her and when he finally did she decided to spit out eggs over several weeks time. Then disaster hit and I lost power while at work and the eggs in the incubator died during hatch or hatched with the buggy eyes. So needless to say the struggle is hopefully finally reaping its rewards. I contemplated so many times just selling what I had and finding something easier, then I would see pictures of other birds and think why throw away a small flock of nice birds that have worked so hard to try to retain.

Do you have any pictures of them you could share?? Love to see them.

Well, I ended up having only one chick hatch and it ended up falling out a small hole for a feed cup (no idea how as its up a fair ways) and getting chilled in a corner in the middle of the night ugh...... back to square one. And 2 of my mille fleur pullets turned into cockerals..... some days can't win for loosing no matter how hard you try!!

Awwww.

Don't give up. Some of the greatest successes have been from error after error!

Here's to Show Champion in your future

Oh the sex change fairy strikes again!

That's too bad, but keep going you'll finally get what you want.

Ok for next year get yourself a silkie or Cochin bantam hen or two or a mix of Cochin/Silkie with those girls it won't be a matter of "if" they will hatch for you but how often you let them hatch lol. I keep my Hova Bator in a spare room in the house, that way no temperature fluctuations and I hatch lots and lots of chicks, way too many actually. It's worked perfectly for three years now. I had Mille Fleurs, I like them, I was surprised by how feisty they are and they can really fly when they want to. Beautiful birds.

So my hen sat on a doz eggs 11 hatched and my second hen helped take over the care of the babies, I have 4 chicks still under one hen and lost a 5th last night to getting chilled out of 11 hatched.(sigh) I do have a pullet and a cockeral in my grow out cage in my house though. Might move them out to the coop as they are old enough and move the 4 babies off their mom and into the house..

I find this time of year I have to bring them in, some babies are just slow learners , get chilled very quickly then are too chilled to chase after momma to get warmed up.

So here are a couple of pics of some of the youngsters I got. The oldest is a young pullet just starting to feather out. The next oldest is a young cockerel who has just started to get his beard back but he has such nice dark rust. The other two are the youngest pullets just starting to feather up. The hens have been laying again and one of my other hens went broody so she's sitting on the eggs. Interesting watching them go through their ugly scraggly stage.