Sunday 23 October 2016

Brooding...

Spock's eggs still have not hatched...
How long should we wait before giving up??
We have built shelters over Melon and over Blork, so we currently have three girls sitting, comfortably sheltered from the wild weather and relentless rain. Naturally, after building the shelters, today we actually have some sunshine - albeit intermittently - and all the birds are sun-bathing, stretched out luxuriously in the warmth. The mums-to-be rush out from under cover, take a hurried dust bath, and return to their eggs. More rain due this afternoon.
Of Snowpea's brood of four, at least one is definitely a male, and another looks decidedly female - but then, until she started laying, we thought Spock was a boy.
We will give her another two or three days, and then break an egg to check what is happening.

3 comments:

  1. If it helps at all I found my eggs hatched late this season and I suspect from the prolonged cold we have bad. Hatch rates were lower than anticipated but eventually healthy bouncy baby quail hatched! My quail are loving this sunshine too!

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  2. Hi Lisa. Thank you, that's great to know! I wonder if the mothers can control when they hatch the babies, so they avoid the bad weather...
    Its fantastic that you have babies! Are your quails hatching naturally or in an incubator?
    Would you be interested in swapping any males at some stage, by any chance? We are really keen to get some new breeding stock as we are a bit worried about them getting too inbred.
    Thanks again, Ruth and Chloe

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  3. We are hatching in an incubator eggs from QLD and TAS in an effort to diversify our harems and then hopefully we might see some natural egg incubation! Would be glad to give you a male or swap males if we have excess beyond what our pens can house comfortably. At the moment it looks like we got mostly females from QLD and we aren't sure yet about our TAS babies. I will keep you posted.

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