Friday 8th October 2010 - weather: unseasonably mild

Quail Diary update

Day 18 for the first family, and they are practically fully grown. I will have photos to update you tomorrow, but we have 4 stripy golden, 1 range and 1 pied white.

You may of course recall, that as soon as the family left the incubator, I filled it again, and yesterday afternoon we spotted the first signs of hatching. Reader, as I type this we have 5 chicks and 2 yet to hatch. They do look mighty uncomfortable all squeezed into the incubator, but this time tomorrow they will be in their nursery with room to roam. Four of those eggs had been freshly laid that day, the other 3 were from a supply in the fridge! I did wonder if refridgerated eggs could hatch, and the answer is, yes, they do.

I will take photos of the new batch tomorrow as we move them.

The main family have now stopped laying, so there will be no more incubator action until early spring when I am hoping to purchase 6 fertilised eggs from another source to mix up the gene pool.