Hatching season?

[John]

FYI...The temperature of your egg storage room should be between 55 & 68 degrees with a relative humidity between 75 & 80% according to the University of Georgia.
I printed page 4 of the article (see link below) and posted it in my egg storage room for a reference.  I\'ve got the temp where it belongs, but I can never get the humidity that high this time of year and I have many pans of water all over in the room.
 http://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/Avian/qualconproc.pdf

[Sharon Yorks]

I set 21 eggs on Dec 31st. There were 7 each from 3 hens. I candled them last night and found that one of my hens must have said, \"No way, buddy!\" to my cockerel because all of her eggs were clear. I think the rest all look pretty good, although two of them appear very dark inside.
Sharon

Peeps started hatching yesterday at noon and finished up today at around the same time. As I suspected, the 7 from the one hen were never fertile. 6 out of the 7 splashes hatched and 5 out of the 7 blues hatched. One of the blue chick looks like a cross between a splash and a blue and is almost grey. I\'ll have to post a picture tomorrow. All of the blues are out of the same splash male and black hen. I\'m surprised it has such a variation in color from the other peeps since they all have the same parents. I\'m eager to see how much it changes color and/or if it stays grey. My blue-looking Indy chick turned black so I\'m figuring this chick will darken up some as it gets older.

--Sharon

[John]

I will accept 3 more orders for LF lavenders and LF wheatens (the limit on the order form for these varieties) before I consider them sold out for the season.  An order form and all the details are on my Chick Hatchery site.  
I\'ve had Canadian orders before for Ontario and British Columbia, but this year I have orders from two provinces I haven\'t before...Quebec and Alberta!  There may be one more order for over the border coming in the mail.
Another first for me is an order from Hawaii.  I\'ve sent chicks to Alaska before and most of the lower 48, but I haven\'t kept track as Paul has.
Due to the warm winter I started incubating early this year and after saving many chicks from these first hatches for myself, I should be able to start filling some orders sooner than usual.

[John]

I shipped my 1st 3 orders of chicks, of the season, yesterday.  They were accepted at my local post office between 4:04 and 4:06.  One box was picked up at the post office in TN this morning at 9:13 and another was picked up in FL at 11:46.  None were DOA, although one lady said a few \"bantams have significant spraddle legs and one of those is pretty severe\".  I\'ve been hatching chicks for many decades and had to look up what that meant last year when a customer said some chicks had it.  Of the couple hundred chicks that hatched yesterday I found only 1 with that condition and it died shortly thereafter.
The third box is going to IL, but the post office tracking site doesn\'t show it has left Detroit yet.  I think that box is being trucked and hopefully it will be there sometime tomorrow.  
I know Michael said he has problems shipping from his local post office, but fortunately there are no problem from here this year...so far. :rolleyes:  

3/1/2012...update...the IL chicks were picked up at 6:18 this morning.  

[Christie Rhae]

Looking forward to my chicks!