yipee my eggs are finally here. I made myself wait until lunchtime to clean them and the incubator up ready to start our new feathery family. Questions is which eggs do i choose? I have 12 and only 7 slots in the incubator. Checked my book, said to go for the medium ones as people generally sold the big and small ones on to eat. Followed their advice and picked a mixture of patterns on the shell. Not that I suppose it will make much difference. Put them into the incubator and kept checking them as they turned automatically every 3 hours. I also put a corss on eas of them so that i could check that they were turning ok. Thank go I did as a couple of them havent been turning properly.

Dad came around tea time and bought me a great little wooden wine box, that i can use to put the chicks in when they hatch. He suggested that maybe my choice of egg was a little too big and wasnt being picked up by the rollers in the incubator. So I decided to swop it over with one of my spare ones, that was a little bit smaller. Felt a bit guilty that i was killing one off. Even thought about trying to hatch them out in the airing cupboard but decided against it, was worried I would forget to keep turning them.

photo to come

After hours of reading books and searching the internet, I found someone on ebay that could supply me some hatching quail eggs.

However I still think in my haste ive ended up ordering the wrong ones! I think ive ended up with a mix instead of just japs.

Cant wait to get them though, they should arrive on thurs or friday. Incubator due tommorrow as well. oooooh excitement

yay

had a phone call from a neighbour to say that they had a parcel for me. I knew what it would be. Couldnt wait to get back from London and collect my parcel. Ripped open the packaging as soon as i got in. yes it was my incubator, disinfectant and special quail egg holder to go inside.

I took it around to Dad's to show him and have a look at the booklet that came with it. I did take around my chicken roosting bars and bits of wood, that im going to make a chook house door with. Not sure how impressed he was that I bought the bits of wood with me as well!

Its fascinating stuff, working out when we would be able to see the first signs of our chicks growing.

Just need to wait for my eggs to turn up now.

started to look at some quail egg boxes, think it might be too far ahead to think about that yet though.

I thought that this would be a wonderful way to keep everyone updated with my first lot of quail incubating.

This whole idea came from my Dad's suggestion and also the fact that im currently researching the purchase of some new chickens.

It took sometime researching what breed quail to get and also what incubator to buy. Originally I was going to buy some quails and breed from them. But I had a crazy moment last weekend after I read my new quail book. To add to the excitement, I also had a voucher with ebay to spend over easter; £25 off when we spent £50. Rock on the incubator buying I thought. I also bought practical poultry magazine as it had an article in there about incubating and what sort of incubators to buy. Bought these from ebay in the end the r-com incubator and some disinfectant.