Chicken 2.0

As of April 18th I accomplished my second goal for for my chicken project. I bred chickens that I hatched from eggs (first goal) then bred and hatched the eggs from those chickens (second goal). The dam is definitely Dutches and I'm almost certain the sire of most of them is Black Beard. But it's impossible to say for sure since all three chickens, Dutches, Samson and Black Beard, were penned together. One thing is certain, any chick with tufts must be Black Beards since they can only get tufts from a tufted parent.

Things went amazingly well in the hatch. Every single one of the 10 eggs I put in the incubator hatched. 5 of the 10 chicks have tufts. Based on regular Araucana hatch statistics and taking into account the "lethal" nature of the tufts gene, my results are nothing short of miraculous. ( It's considered "normal" for 25% of an Araucana hatch to die in the shell.) They all seem to be doing pretty well now on day two also. With any luck most of them will grow up OK.

In addition to the Araucanas that I hatched from my own eggs, I acquired some "Araucana" pullets from the feed store. They are actually some type of Easter-Egg chicken. I purchased them since I wasn't sure I would be able to get any of my eggs to hatch and I wanted more hens. Now they are somewhat redundant but at least they'll add a little color to the yard.


Here is a close up of one of the new Araucana chicks.
I use the highly advanced cardboard-box-and-hand-me-down-lamp brooding method. Yeah. Only finest for my chicks.

You can see a movie of the chicks in action here: http://www.mediamax.com/lordtangent/Hosted/Chicks_2.0_day_old.MOV

I'm hatching another couple of batches before getting rid of my adult roosters. I'll decide if I want to do another generation later and figure out what to do for roosters at that point.