favorite kitty, I love those stripey patterns on baby chicks. :) My birds always lose the neato stripe and molt in adult feathers of standard tan, brown, etc. though... Very pretty babies you have there! Incubation, hatching & chicks have been covered in this forum quite a bit, so I'd search the forum for keywords like 'incubator', 'chicks', etc. :) Ditto for the Internet in general--loads of great advice out there, and it really does help to read everything you can get your hands on. My chicken info site is here, with this section of hatching chicks: http://home.earthlink.net/~velvetsparrow/VSChickHensBroodiesChicks.htm On of the clevrest things I read in this forum was from the guy who placed his incubator in a closet! When you think about it, it's the perfect spot--kids and dogs can't get at it, no drafts, etc. Since the hatching eggs don't need light, it makes great sense. I'm going to try it for my next hatch. Just don't forget it's in there--! Velvet ~:>

You know, it was not expensive in money OR time to do this, it was pretty darned simple. :) DH got a PS EyeToy color camera for $5.00 at Gamestop, and YahooLive is the host for the cam, sound and chat, at no cost to us. My husband had the know-how to get things going, but you can find out online and it isn't difficult or complicated. The number of people viewing the cam and talking in chat crashes my husband's computer sometimes, but we just restart things and everything's fine. We wanted to hatch chicks anyway, so thought we'd share the experience. The cam just pointed through the viewing panes in the lid of the incubator, now we set it inside the brooder box. Baby chicks DO have a wonderful effect on all who gaze upon them, it's like Valium for your eyes. *L* And yeah, it is VERY remarkable that Chicken Sister has babies this late in life--but then, both of the boys LOVE her to distraction, you should have seen them run over and burble over her when we brought her back from the vet after her egg-binding adventure. What a couple of love-struck chuckleheads. :) It was very sweet, they missed her so! We'll be hatching again the weekend of June 21st, and will resume chickam then, if anyone wants to watch. We will have our incubators issues solved before we start more eggs. Velvet ~:>

Thanks for the replies - so far the House Wren has not touched the surviving two Baby Blues - and momma and Papa are taking care of them. However - I can hear the Wrens all around, and I also am removing sticks from the other boxes around the property. I should have tried a Wren guard - however I have never put one on - so was worried about the Blues not taking too it. But if they nest again, I will for sure try it - after the first egg is laid. One a side note - we have a dead tree in our back yard - that a wood pecker bored a hole in, and must now have a nest in it. I saw her chasing the wren a way - but her nest is pretty high up. Also - we have a Phoebe nesting under our overhang - this is her second year. I went and checked her eggs out - and there was a Cowbird egg in it! We also had two robins nest near our house - both nests were robbed of their eggs - I'm thinking the crows got at them. Unfortunately no Chickadee nests in our boxes this year.. but probably best because of the Wrens..... seems like they arrived early this year. So did the humming birds.

If a baby animal or bird is defective the adult will abandon/reject it. It is not uncommon. I don't know if it has anything to do with the color of the eggs though.