Chicken Update

 The baby chicks that hatched the last week of school are doing great. There are 9 chicks. Four Black Copper Marans and five Blue Copper Marans. Well, something like that. 3 chicks were hatched from Chocolate egg colors, 3 from Olive egg color, and 3 from blue eggs. This is not a controlled group. These chicks were hatched because I had just got rid of six out of nine roosters from the November 2020 hatch of BCM's. I could not keep all of the roos around but I wanted to keep some of their DNA. So I randomly collected eggs in hopes of collecting some. I believe I did because all of the chicks currently have feathered legs and feet, a trait that would come from the mother and father. The two main roos currently running the flock do not have feathered legs so there is a high probability that the DNA grab was a success. What is exciting about this hatch is that three of the chicks could be hens and could be carrying the gene for egg colors of green and red. Now it's about a 24-week wait. We will find out on or around the first week of 2022. It could be later because that is the dead of winter and the hen's reproduction slows way down.

A side note is that we had three chicks hatch out on the farm this past week mostly from brownish eggs. Two of the chicks are orange and one is black. None have feathers on their legs.

On my recent trip to Tahoe where I was asked to watch a Tahoe neighbors chickens, there was a chance that the eggs could be fertilized. The owner had just got rid of a roo, so there was a high probability that the eggs could be fertilized. I repeated myself. These eggs, 5 total, and 5 more from the HHS farm were placed into an incubator in early July. From the HHS farm 2 chocolate, 2 blue, and one olive color egg.