What’s cuter than a pink bucket of chicks?
This is the second time we’ve hatched chicks in the incubator from our own eggs. We joined in on the “Easter Hatch-a-thon” held annually at backyard chickens.com, and started the incubation on March 26. These chicks started hatching even before the 21-day expected incubation, so some arrived in the days just before Easter, and some after.
The mother hens were Rhode Island Reds and Plymouth Barred Rocks. There were four possible fathers: a Rhode Island Red, a Plymouth Barred Rock, a Speckled Sussex, and a giant Buff Orpington. In this picture, you can see several black birds with a white spot on their head. Those are the male Red Rooster X Rock hen crosses, which are “sex-linked,” meaning their sex is determinable when they hatch.
