The Small Gate Garden

I will be setting one more fertility check this coming week. If water color fertility is good I will start working through all the egg orders!!!!!

The lavender birchen Marans hatched (only two from a shipped dozen) I’m leaving them in over night to see if any more hatch.

I decided not to move forward with them.
I’ll be moving forward with downsizing my program even further after all preorders are completed for the season.

What that means???
I’ll be listing a couple little lavender birchen Marans up for grabs in the morning.

After my quick update yesterday I had several messages about chicks.
Let me give a more detailed update. I didn’t answer messages because I went to bed at 7:30 pm. 😂
I’ve been sick for a weeks and a half (why I went to bed so early), it’s also why I haven’t met for adult bird lick ups that I’ve promised hold for, it’s also why I haven’t worked harder to break the broody watercolor egger hens.
It’s also why I’ve made no attempt to disrupt the watercolor egger hen who has a large nest she is sitting on and attempt to move her.
I could block off her nest so that the other hens stop laying in it BUT we have had a resident black snake visiting her and her growing babies,
And I need full view to see at all times.
There for collecting watercolor eggs is a little tricky right now. I can set eggs but not quite ready to consider sending any out just yet.
As I said I’m also down an incubator my brinsea is malfunctioning and I sent my large maticoopx out with a hatch from home family that I trust.
My other incubator has lavender birchen Marans eggs in it. Because they were shipped eggs I don’t want to bother them. I’m not going to do any stagger hatching attempt or moving them to a small cheap incubator. I ordered a small maticoopx yesterday bc it was on sale and had a coupon. I’ll move them to that when it gets here and then set a large hatch of every breed. This will get me started in the first few local orders (so long as water color fertility is good).
By that time my second maticoopx will be coming back to me and the lavender birchen will have hatched. I’ll be able to stagger hatch with enough machines then to finish out local orders and also by then hopefully the hens there were broody will be laying again. THEN I should be sending out shipped egg orders.
So I’m still a few weeks out from that but that’s the detailed version.
There is no need to message me about your pre order status just yet. I need to get a few rounds of eggs going, check fertility again. Try to trouble shoot hens laying eggs in the broody nest so that quantity and quality of what is being laid is confirmed, and get the broody hens back on line as well as be faster than the snake who, like everyone else is waiting for watercolor eggers 😂

We absolutely have fertility now! I just have to trouble shoot and work around a couple other things. And I’ve been sick 🤧 we are heading in the right direction and moving forward.

Photo of eggs my hubby collected yesterday that will be heading into the incubator for pre orders. Once I have at least 8-10 watercolor (only 4 yesterday) I will set these eggs.
Once I confirm the fertility in those for sure I will contact the pre order list. And we will continue to work from there that way. As soon as the hens in the broody breaker come back online shipping will start.
If these hens can handle the volume needed but it’s taking just a little longer than 3 days to collect, I’ll reach out and anyone that’s ok with them being a little older than 3 days can move up the line.

We are heading in the right direction!

Locals: I will be starting to set eggs for local chick pre orders. It’s also a fertility test on watercolor eggers. Almost all of my local pre orders have water color eggers in them. Fertility will continue to be a little spotty while I deal with the broodys.
I’m down an incubator of course, but I will be getting started in getting small batches of pre orders under way.
Eggs will still be a little bit longer while I balance out strong or consistent fertility.

Photo for attention!!!
These eggs went out with our current hatch from home. I’m tempted to keep this group! lol I will accept reserve hold (with deposit) on either half or the whole hatch.

The pearl colored eggs to the right have a chance of being aqua speckled laying offspring 🤞