Question Question for Wyandotte or Heritage Chicken Breeders

[Reboot]

So I am on my second batch of 40 Wyandotte eggs in the Hovabator. The first 40 ended up hatching out only 7 surviving chicks which are doing well and growing larger by the day. From the first batch one died of a possible B1 deficiency despite using a dropper to supplement its feed and a second chick died after having pecked through the egg but never actually hatching. I candled the second Hovabator batch last night at 14 days and out of this 40 egg batch I think I have 12 embryos but I can't be sure yet until they actually hatch. I just tossed out 28 eggs so I'm thinking that I am running at a pretty miserable hatch rate given what I have been reading online. I do my best to check the Hovabator many times a day. I have a remote thermostat in there to keep the humidity at 45% and temperature at 99 F. At day 18 lock-down the humidity goes up to 55 to 65%. Is this a heritage breed thing, low hatch rate or just a developmentally delayed flockster issue (yes me)? Maybe its early yet to be hatching eggs but at this low hatch rate I need to be doing this if we are to reach our flock number goal of 50 to 60 birds come spring. I've not seen any of the 14 hens we have show any broodiness as yet. I get about 6 eggs a day on average and it is increasing to more a day as the days get longer now (12 eggs yesterday). I have one rooster in with the hens at all times. Any ideas?

[Reboot]

I'll try and upload a picture so as to comply with forum rules!!!

[Ontario Chick]

Turns out I can't stay away fro PTO, no matter how far I am. :)
There were long discussion on the old Poultry Swap on the subject of Wyandotte fertility, and I personally could write books on the subject.
There are couple of things to your disadvantage, one is a proven lower fertility in Rose Comb breeds, the other, still a bit early in the year for Wyandottes.
When I started hatching Wyandottes in the Hovabator (had to look it up...2008)

I started hatching in March, I should say, tried to start....
And proceded to throw out batch after batch of infertile eggs.
Nothing more discouraging then collecting, babying, setting and then throwing out dozen's of eggs.
Then I thought there has to be a better way and started to break eggs (and making omelets) until I learned to recognize what a fertilized egg looked like and didn't set until I felt I was seeing more the half fertilized.
Quick check tells me that I wasn't happy with the numbers until end of April, beginning of May.
I see many omelets in your future

Just to prove my point, here was 100% hatch, July first 2014

[Ontario Chick]

BTW I never have more then 6 hens with one rooster and even that doesn't guarantee he will not have his preferences.
While breeding Ameraucana I could have any number of hens with a rooster and the eggs were all fertile, but in some ways Ameraucanas are more or less "mutts", sorry I mean genetically diverse, where Wyandottes are Heritage breed so more or less closely bread.

[Reboot]

BTW I never have more then 6 hens with one rooster and even that doesn't guarantee he will not have his preferences.
Wyandottes are Heritage breed so more or less closely bread.

Ontario Chick if I kept some of these rooster chicks and included them in my flock will that give me DNA hassles or should I look for a couple of roosters from elsewhere?

This is a terrific help thank you very much as I was disappointed to toss so many eggs every time. Bright side is April is just around the corner and I've made all my mistakes while learning how to manage this Hovabator. I'm already seeing a gradual increase in egg production so I was wondering if fertility may be increasing with it. I also suspected being heritage there had to be a reason why commercial producers don't rely on them - they don't reproduce like lab rats. I'm very okay with low fertility as the bird is worth the hassle and one more decent incubator batch after this second one will put us in range of our flock goal if fertility comes up. If not I have to run another batch or two and that's okay. I'm grateful for the rooster suggestion as well as I was second guessing reducing my 3 roosters to one based on a 14 to 1 ratio I'd read about somewhere but foolishly that rate was likely for another more prolific breed and I just missed that part. One thing I really like about Wyandottes is they are so predator savvy practically right out of the egg. With the coyotes, coons, weasels and hawks/ eagles around here I'll take low fertility over a just plain stupid bird any day. The surviving adult chickens may balance things out for us!

[Killerbunny]

My girls can be frightful snobs too, they have very clear preferences in roosters. They were fine with Lucky & Chunky at first and I got fertile eggs over the first winter with him and then the fertility went down after the January (these were pullets and hens). In May I still only got 50%. They much preferred Lucky and basically rejected Chunky. May be because of the Blue Columbian thing of course. Very sweet little birds though. I ended up sticking with my mutts for eggs since they can be quite savvy for free range and concentrating on the turkeys!

[Killerbunny]

Oh @Badstart you may have noticed they have very fluffy bums. You may have do do a bikini pluck on the girls and boys.

[Kbr42]

@Ontario Chick I don't mean to highjack the post...did you lockdown in eggs cartons? I'm going to be locking down on Saturday and I have a couple of eggs with detached air sacs I was thinking of hatching out in eggs cartons. I was just wondering how to do it.

Cheers

[Reboot]

@Ontario Chick I don't mean to highjack the post...did you lockdown in eggs cartons? I'm going to be locking down on Saturday and I have a couple of eggs with detached air sacs I was thinking of hatching out in eggs cartons. I was just wondering how to do it.

Gosh no worries about a hijack I had the same question as I'm locking down this Thursday.

Oh @Badstart you may have noticed they have very fluffy bums. You may have do do a bikini pluck on the girls and boys.

I'm afraid to ask why I need to hot wax my chickens' butts but I can make a wild guess that it helps with fertility rates? Geeese I did not expect to get all weird about my birds sex life!

[Reboot]

Oh and as to rejecting roosters I saw that happening here with the 3 roosters I kept. Two roosters were rapists it seemed and were always literally attacking the hens which fought them both off often if not always. The one rooster I kept seemed to give the ladies respect and I never once saw any of them reject him. I read something about heritage chickens engaging in some kind of mating dance where they stand over the hen and if she's willing she responds. The rapists roosters never did that and this guy I kept always did; he'd come up behind them stand sideways and bend his neck over the hens. The hens would just sit there and never fought him off that I saw. The rapists became chicken Pho...... I'm a retired cop so that form of justice seemed appropriate and too hard to ignore without doing something before the hens were injured.