Over the weekend, the eggs in one of our incubators hatched. Four chicks pecked their way out but sadly one died. The hatch rate was a bit disappointing. Seven eggs resulted in only 3 live chicks. We opened the eggs that didn't hatch. One dead chick on one and the other two were infertile. We have come to the conclusion that five hens was possibly too many for the cockerel to service. We will therefore remove two hens tonight from the chicken run where the ginger nut ranger cockerel (Gingie) has six hens.
We have checked out the two big incubators which were causing problems when we last used them last year and we think the problem of the alarms on them going off regularly has been resolved. One of these incubators will be tested over the next couple of weeks with some quail eggs.
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