Eggs Are Ready!

The final egg shipment arrived today, Giant Cochins!

So all the eggs are now unpacked, clean, marked and ready to go into the incubators, which are also ready to go. I'll start the eggs tomorrow morning!

The eggs I got online are: 18 Gray Giant Cochin, 16 Light Brahma and 6 Buff Brahma. We were also supposed to get 5 black Americaunas eggs, but therin lies a tale...

Fate took a hand, it seems. When I go the shipment fro the breeder and opened the box, what I did NOT see was the familiar blue-green of Americaunas eggs. Instead, the eggs inside were a deep, rich, chocolate brown.

Ummm...Americaunas don't lay those, but Marans do.

I check out the paperwork, which indeed lists the eggs as 10 Birchen Marans. A few emails later, the seller and I discover that the shipping lables for another shipment and mine had gotten switched, so I ended up with Birchen Maran eggs instead of black Americaunas. Seeing as how time was short, and by this evening my Americaunas eggs still had not turned up at the other customer's house, we decided to stick with the Marans eggs. Marans are lovely birds that are much prized for the startling deep brown of their eggs.

We're also adding a few of our own eggs. The white ones have three possible moms: Poof (White Crested Black Polish), Sugar (Buff Laced Polish) or Sora (White Leghorn). The brown eggs have several possible moms as well, although one we KNOW is from Rugger, our Salmon Faverolle. The other possible brown egg moms are: Yoya (Gray Giant Cochin), Sonic (Golden Laced Cochin) and Gloria (Brinkotter). Three possible dads have all been very dutiful with their hens: Phoenix (red/blue Wheaten Americaunas/Barred Rock mix), Scott (Frizzle/MilleFleur Belgian d'Uccle mix) and Smokey (Porcelain Belgian d'Uccle).

So, we have a total of 56 eggs to start tomorrow morning! All the shipped eggs were beautifully and securely packed, with only one Cochin egg suffering a crack in transit. We will candle (shine a bright light through the shell in a darkened room) them at around 10-12 days and eliminate any that are clear--that is, haven't started to develop a chick.

Tomorrow is supposed to be the coldest rainstorm for our area since the 70's, with snow possible right down to the Hollywood hills--so I'm very glad all the eggs arrived safe before the cold snap hit!