June 27, 2007 

he Chantecler chicks started to hatch today. So far we have 4 white ones and a black. The hatch rate is not as good as we had hoped for. The barnyard crosses from our place hatched out very well and they were closely hatched together. So far we have 5 out of 24 eggs on the Chanteclers. I gave them a little extra time in the incubator to make sure they were really dry before sending them out to the brooder. Their legs are too small for our bands available here, so I used sharpie marker and made 2 lines around each of their legs until they are large enough to wear bands.

When we candles them a week or so ago, we had 16 viable ones out of 24 and I am wondering what went wrong that we only have 5.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that we have a better hatch on the heritage turkeys. When we candled them, we had 46 out of 50 which were viable.