[chrismahon]

We have four Wyandotte hens -three Blue Laced and one Buff Laced. They are running with a Blue Laced Wyandotte cockerel and we want to hatch from them. What we don't want to do is put eggs from the Buff Laced hen in the incubator and waste space, because there is 50% wastage hatching Blue Laced anyway (25% will be Buffs and 25% will be Golds). The Buff is the best layer now, so perhaps a third of the eggs will be hers?


All the eggs look identical, so is there any way we can screen out the Buff ones? We haven't got time to sit and watch and there is no way of building trap nests. We don't want to separate her because she will get very upset, stressed and perhaps ill as a result. Thought about putting lipstick around the Buff's vent every morning in the hope it will rub onto the egg but are worried about an allergic reaction. Is there any other method or a proprietary product available?

[mojocafa]

Thought about putting lipstick around the Buff's vent every morning

  this image gave me the chuckle I was needing


I have no idea how to advise on that one

[Marches Farmer]

Can you put her in a coop next to the Blue Laced?  If you hatch her eggs and she's producing, say, 30% of your eggs there's a chance 50% of hers will be Buff Laced, so 15% of all eggs likely to be Buff, plus 17.5% of those from the other three, who are producing the remaining 70%.  That ups the possible % from 25% to 32.5%, so not that huge a jump?

[Womble]

Thought about putting lipstick around the Buff's vent every morning in the hope it will rub onto the egg but are worried about an allergic reaction.

I doubt there'd be any reaction. It's designed for lips at the end of the day, and they're pretty senstive organs!

I can just imagine Mrs Womble's reaction: "What were you doing with my lipstick?"  "oh, just painting a chicken's bum dear. Don't worry - I've put it back where I got it from!  ". Do be careful Chris! 

[Clansman]

 Separating them is the only real way to do it although the lipstick idea made me chuckle.

I think the hen would just remove it anyway and I doubt if anything smeared around the vent area would actually transfer to the egg anyway, if you watch an egg being laid the inside of the vent area pushes out with the movement of the egg.

Can you put a small wire partition in the hut/run to keep two separate areas but keeping them all in the same oriiginal place?

I've kept on or two hens in a large dog cage within a hut before for a week or two.

same idea,  just to gather hatching eggs from the birds I wanted to breed with

[HesterF]

Are all their eggs the same colour and shape? Just because I find even if I have four same breed hens laying in the same house, I can spot that there are four slightly different shades/shapes of eggs. In most cases, I have no idea which belongs to which but if I was to put one day into watching them carefully, I'd then know for future (although I must admit I get some of the hens mixed up too ). Having said that, I thought I could spot the single Aylesbury duck's eggs amongst my Silver Appleyard eggs last year and ended up hatching a white drake. I have no idea whether it was the wrong egg or odd genes (some hatching eggs I sent off also resulted in a white duck and there was no chance that that was from the Aylesbury).

H

[darkbrowneggs]

I have heard you can use cochineal (sp) but I have no idea if it would work, though sounds as though it might 

[chrismahon]

Forgot to say these hens are 5 years old this year and the Buff is the cockerels favourite, so any form of separation will cause a lot of stress for both. The last thing we need is to upset the cockerel so that he stops treading the other hens.


Red colouring is to be avoided I think, because of the risk of pecking. The chances of getting any other colour of lipstick in agricultural France is probably nil.


So we've got to thinking about kid's face paint?

[Clansman]

I doubt if anything smeared around the vent area would actually transfer to the egg anyway, if you watch an egg being laid the inside of the vent area pushes out with the movement of the egg.

I maybe didn't explain that correctly, so as a picture paints a thousand words, watch this video.

you will see that when the egg is laid it will not come into contact with the vent area at all so any sort of vent marking idea wouldn't work.

As separation and trap nesting are not an option and you can't physically watch them laying, would recording whats happening within the nest boxes via cameras be an option?

Hopefully you would then be able to identify the layer/egg, especially if you could check for eggs fairly regularly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAiTOuSyJsQ

[devonlady]

Thought about putting lipstick around the Buff's vent every morning in the hope it will rub onto the egg but are worried about an allergic reaction.

I doubt there'd be any reaction. It's designed for lips at the end of the day, and they're pretty senstive organs!

I can just imagine Mrs Womble's reaction: "What were you doing with my lipstick?"  "oh, just painting a chicken's bum dear. Don't worry - I've put it back where I got it from!  ". Do be careful Chris! 

Can't help with your problem but couldn't we all do with a Womble in our lives

[chrismahon]

Sorry Clansman, I appreciate your point and that any colouring won't be transferred by the laying process itself. It may by a fluke get rubbed off somewhere though, but that's going to a bit of a long shot.


Unfortunately cameras on our budget isn't an option either.


If we manage to identify any it will at least reduce the odds that Marches Farmer stated. Problem is in a perfect hatch of 24 we will only get 6 Blue Laced hens anyway, unless we are very lucky or unlucky!

[nutterly_uts]

Could you not separate the cockeral and the buff from the others for a day or two, work out what the buff lays, then put them all back?

[Womble]

This might be impractical depending on your setup, but the only other thing I can think of is to block up her existing nestbox, and instead offer a choice of a load of other places to lay. If she chooses a different nest to the others, you're laughing.

(Of course I give them a 90% chance of all choosing the same nestbox, just to annoy you!)

[chrismahon]

They are swapping nest boxes so can't establish a favourite, but as luck would have it the buff is laying completely different shaped eggs this year and so it's easy to tell the difference. Hope it stays like that.

[roddycm]

I would just hatch all the eggs I can and sell the chicks I don't want at day old. You won't waste any money rearing them that way and will still have space to keep hatching until you have all the blues you want! I love wyandottes! For me is a case of the more the merrier! Good luck!