The chicks have hatched!

After 21 days, six chicks hatched from nine eggs. One egg never developed, called a “yolker”. One developed for a week, then stopped, called a “ringer”. The final loss was one that developed the full three weeks, and pipped, cracked the egg and took a breath, but then never was able to hatch. I don’t want to open it up to find out why, but it could have been impropper development, or it could be that the membrane was too thick or dry for it to break loose.

Three of the hatched chicks are males, or cockals, and three are pullets. I know this for a very specific reason.

These eggs came from a cross between a Barred Rock rooster, and an Easter Egger hen. Because of the sex specific color genetics of avians, certain color genes get passed on in very specific ways.

So in this case, since the parents were a cross, a Gene in males for a white spot on the head was expressed, but not in females. This is called “sexlinked” and my chicks were thus labelled male and female, where normally I would have no idea.