Sapphire Coast Quail

06/09/2023

Our araucanas have finally started laying! We'll collect eggs for a week and then incubate them.

These will all be lavender and barred lavender.

06/09/2023

03/03/2023

One of our recent chicken hatches, a frizzle naked neck. Barnyard mix.

22/02/2023

Angel hatched five, we sold one. Sometimes she has four, Sometimes she has none.
White Head hatched eight. Sometimes she has ten. Sometimes she has one.
The black pied hatched 17. We sold one. Sometimes she has five. Sometimes she has 25.

That should mean we have 28 duckies (we do). But NO ONE knows which duckies belong to which mumma.

07/02/2023

I've got two cages of quail that I've basically been getting no eggs from for the last month or so because they've been eating the eggs.

Last week I switched them to regular layer pellets for chooks. Previously, I was getting about 18 eggs a day. Since I switched feed, I've been getting more eggs each day. Today I got 30 eggs.

02/02/2023

A chicken egg at day nine of incubation. Both mother and father are heterozygous naked necks.

19/01/2023

Oh nooo!

This morning I found half a dozen old chook eggs in the laundry room. When I opened the carton, one exploded. I chucked the whole thing out the back door, just wanting to get them out of the house.

I was working on a step ladder a little while ago. I heard what sounded like a gunshot. I thought, "Oh. Those eggs!"

Luna came BARRELING around the side of the house. She shot up the step ladder and into my lap. We both tumbled backward off the ladder...

And that's when I smelled it. After we both went through a gagging fit while trying to untangle ourselves from each other (I swear she grew 100 extra legs just then 😂), we went inside and Luna got her teeth brushed. Oddly, she did not complain! 😂

It is never a dull day with a kelpie.

14/01/2023

I'm fairly certain that these muscovy ducklings are ripple.

12/01/2023

Our smallest quail egg yet.

08/01/2023

It doesn't take long to add up when you're getting more than 15 eggs a day. There's more than seven dozen eggs here and I've already sold four dozen in the last few days.

07/01/2023

Last week I set 78 quail eggs. I've just candled them and discarded ⅓ of them. I didn't count but about ½ of what I discarded weren't fertilised and the rest had started and stopped in the first few days. I expect about half of these to hatch.

Some of these eggs were from quail that had only been laying for a week or two, too.

29/12/2022

78 quail eggs in the incubator, we'll have chicks hatching in 17 days.

21/12/2022

Yay!! This is our very FIRST chocolate muscovy duck, and we are EXCITED.

13/12/2022

These photos are the absolute CLEAREST I have ever seen a chicken egg at day 14 of development. These are fascinating photos, if I do say so myself. Chicken eggs take 21 days to hatch, so in about a week, this one should be pipping through its egg and making its debut into the world!

13/12/2022

Candling some eggs tonight. The first I will post (the video) is a muscovy duck egg, due to hatch any day now. If you look closely, not only can you see the duckling moving, but that black spot that moves nearest my thumb is the duckling's bill! It's ready and in the perfect place to start pipping it's way through the egg!

11/12/2022

We got our first quail egg from our first hens hatched this season. She's only six weeks old!

10/12/2022

I can hardly wait to see how these babies look when they're grown. They're currently about three weeks old.

07/12/2022

The babies got moved outside today and given a low waste feeder. I guess it truly is low waste if they get in it!

07/12/2022

Apparently we have a small problem. The kind of problem I like, though. One of our chicken chicks is a frizzle!

03/12/2022

A perfect "spiderweb" of blood vessels in this Blue Laced Red Wyandotte egg that we got last weekend! Out of 21 eggs, 18 are viable!

30/11/2022

One of the naked neck chicks that hatched today. Hopefully it's female.

30/11/2022

Three of our naked neck chicks. Their mumma died unexpectedly and so I've got them in with a couple of dozen quail chicks.

25/11/2022

So...not recessive white as I was hoping, but English white. This means that one of my hens is a tuxedo.

25/11/2022

I walked outside this morning to find that another two hens on a hest had hatched three chicks between them. They also left a BUNCH of eggs in the nest, one of which was pipping.

The remaining eggs have go into the incubator to finish off.

25/11/2022

I went through and feather s*xed 24 quail this morning, all 3-4 weeks old.

I have ten definite hens, six definite roosters, and six rosettas that will have to be vent s*xed when they're older. The roosters and the uns*xed rosettas are in a cage together until they're old enough to vent s*x.

22/11/2022

We have baby guinea pigs and they are so stinking cute!!

18/11/2022

Our latest clutch of chicks. Three of them are naked necks! The colours are a total surprise, too, because Daddy is a barred rock.

16/11/2022

We have four broody miniature silver appleyard ducks. Spring sure does get busy!

16/11/2022

More chickens hatched! Definitely colours we weren't expecting, too.

16/11/2022

They are hungry little buggers!