by Keri Byrum | Jan 26, 2022 | Backyard Chickens |
Black East Indies are beautiful bantam duck with a beetle green sheen to their feathers. They make an excellent addition to a barnyard or home flock. Black East Indie hatching eggs can be hard to find, but they are worth the effort to do so! Once you have them in hand I hope that these simple instructions are helpful to you. The green sheen of Black East Indie duck feathers is beyond compare. Why Black East Indie hatching eggs? Black East Indies can be hard to find locally. For many people, ordering hatching eggs is the only way to acquire these birds. Ordering hatching eggs, of any breed, and having them sent through the mail is risky and I generally consider anything over a 50% hatch rate to be a great success.… Read Full Post
by Keri Byrum | Jul 1, 2020 | Backyard Chickens |
Candling call duck eggs is just like candling eggs of any type, except more exciting because they are call duck eggs! I get a few questions about how to know if eggs are still good or not, especially if a duck gets off of her nest. The best way to tell is to candle the eggs by shining a bright light through them. This can be done with a special candler or even just by using the light on your cell phone. This photo shows me using the built in candling light on my Nature Right 360 incubator. I can tell you that I definitely look at my eggs a lot more than I ever have with this because it’s right there and so darn easy to just take a little peak!… Read Full Post
by Keri Byrum | Apr 21, 2020 | Backyard Chickens |
We had a very busy weekend around our house with 13 duck eggs and 4 chicken eggs hatching! I was sharing photos on Instagram and had a lot of questions about the hatching process and how do eggs hatch? There are lots of sources online, but I am going to share some photos from this weekend and try to explain without using too many technical terms. The above image shows an egg being “candled” to reveal the chicks growth inside the egg. This egg was about 7 days along in its development. The veining is really good to see! The empty spot on the left of the egg is the air sack. Three days before my eggs are scheduled to hatch I again candle the eggs and use a pencil to draw on the egg where the air sack is at within.… Read Full Post
by Keri Byrum | Jan 20, 2020 | Backyard Chickens |
More than anything, a post on hatching call duck eggs might be just to show off some of this incredible cuteness. I mean, it is really too much! If you are receiving your eggs through the mail, unwrap them carefully and allow the eggs to rest (blunt end upward) for 24 hours before setting in your incubator. Eggs may not be perfectly clean, but that’s okay. If there are large chunks of debris on them you can remove them with a fingernail. I have also used a small piece of very fine grade sandpaper to clean. The key here is to avoid using liquids that could allow bacteria to enter the egg. Much of the information available on incubating and hatching chicken eggs can be applied to ducks, as long as the important differences between these two species are taken into account.… Read Full Post
by Contributed | Apr 19, 2019 | Backyard Chickens |
Summer is almost here, and if you’re making grand plans to spend time in your backyard, you need to start getting it in ship-shape. There are always plenty of jobs that can be done in your backyard, but one of the most important is pet-proofing it. Whether you have cats, dogs, chickens or anything else, your pets’ safety when outside is important. Need some help getting started? Here are some tips for pet-proofing your backyard for summer. Secure the premises The first thing you need to do to make your garden safe for pets is to check that all of your fencing is intact. This means going around and checking every panel to see if there are any damaged or loose panels, identifying gaps and putting everything right.… Read Full Post
by Keri Byrum | Oct 9, 2015 | Backyard Chickens |
I realized today that its been awhile since I’ve posted an update on our backyard chickens. Well, I know there are several people that find the story I am about to tell you very funny, but it is both infuriating and heartbreaking to me. The little chicks that we raised in our bathtub were doing fantastic. We were handling them several times a day to ensure they would be friendly, we named them after our favorite baseball players, and everything seemed to be going well. Our little chickies were growing so fast! When we moved them outside to their coop they didn’t miss a beat. They went upstairs to roost each night, still came to say hello when we fed them… it was great.… Read Full Post
