Friday, December 28, 2012

Setting Legbar Eggs

I have finally given in to the compulsion I've been having ever since Indy, my Cream Legbar, started laying eggs. I've been dying to hatch some legbars of my own. 

So, I've been collecting her eggs for a week. As of today, I have 6 (actually, one of those six is a couple days older and has been in the fridge, so who knows how well it will do) legbar eggs to hatch. There's a 7th egg in there. I suspect it's from my speckled sussex, but I'm not sure.

I'm not sure if they're going to be pure legbar or not. I have three roosters- a legbar, a black copper marans, and a polish. I'm not sure that the polish is getting any action, and I *believe* the legbar is the dominant roo, but I suspect he and the marans have been fighting a bit.

I collected eggs for a friend online- a month ago, he'd asked for fertile eggs for his son's science project. Back in November, I was getting 7-8 eggs a day, so I told him getting two dozen on Dec. 14 wouldn't be a problem at all. Heh.  I also said that most of my eggs are pretty easy to tell apart.

Well, all of my chickens with the distinctive eggs stopped laying just before I started collecting. Only Indy, my legbar, was laying colorful eggs. I was getting 2-3 light brown eggs a day, but the only one I was sure on was the speckled sussex. I don't know who the other layers were. -sigh- I tried to watch as carefully as possible, but there were some I just wasn't sure of.

We got to the day before delivery, and I was about 11 eggs short of my promised 24. I got a dozen from my next door neighbor, and those were better in a way because we knew definitely that they were all half blue laced red wyandotte, because her only rooster is one that I gave her from an earlier hatch this year.

His eggs are about 14 days in, and he's had to throw out about 4-5 (all from my neighbor's eggs). Considering they were left in the henhouse overnight, I wonder if they got too cold. I'm excited to see what pops out of his hatch.

Meanwhile, I'm sad that I'm getting no black copper marans eggs, no wellsummer(ish) eggs, no olive eggs, and no polish eggs.