A bump in the population!

So my hatch finally commenced today. It began excitingly with a pip on day 20, a day early for hatching, then took a little hiatus until midnight and into the morning, more pips arrived and finally the first chick, a BBS Wheaten Ameraucana, hatched out.







This little'un was alone for hours, but unlike the last hatch's first Ameraucana, this one was really quiet, good, brave, and VERY curious. I could even tap the incubator and make light little peep peeps at it, and it would look up at me and run on over. SO cute!! So, I lured it to the ventplug, snuck a pink marker through, and marked it to remember it specifically once the others hatch. . .

Later on, even more Ameraucanas hatched, and our Jersey Giants followed right behind. After a while it was a whole party of Jersey Giant hatchings.







And of course, during all this new traffic that soon got pretty busy and crowded, my first little "strawberry blonde" watched from above. . .



And finally, the Marans began to hatch. . .



I find that when we hatch chicks, they seem to take turns. . . One will only start to zip and hatch once another has already hatched from its egg, wandered off, and settled down. It's like they are waiting in line with their tickets out, and sometimes they'll steal each others' tickets! Some of the chicks will almost zip, then another races it to zipping, and hatches. . . So the first one has to wait until that hatched chick is done. THEN it can hatch. . .

In the end, out of 11 Jersey Giant eggs - 10 made it. Wooo!!!
Out of 9 Marans eggs, 5 made it. Not bad, considering 2 I'm pretty sure were never alive before lockdown.
Out of 15 Ameraucana eggs - 5 made it. REALLY not great.
Out of 1 Polish x Easter Egger egg, 1 made it. SO proud of it!!