Sorry I haven't checked back in, things have been hyper busy. We ended up with 12 chicks: 2 Porcelain Belgian d'Uccles, 1 Black Mottled Belgian d'Uccle, 1 Black Silkie, 1 Cuckoo Silkie, 1 Blue Giant Cochin, 2 Lemon Blue Giant Cochins, 2 Golden Laced Giant Cochins and 2 Salmon Faverolles. As for my suppliers, I got all of my eggs of ebay this year. The breeders are extremely nice, down-to-earth folks who replied with friendly emails, bent over backwards to please and in most cases put in an extra egg or two. They also wrapped the eggs extremely well and marked the boxes as to the contents. I did continue to have a low hatch rate this year, even for shipped eggs. I incubated 25 eggs in each incubator, and had 5 hatch in one incubator, 7 in the other. At least hatching eggs by mail this time tells me that it isn't my flock that's to blame. I opened the unhatched eggs, and found eggs at all stages of development, literally from just-started to full-term chicks. They seemed to be spread out equally, too--I didn't see a higher percentage of chicks at certain stages. And both incubators reflected the same results. So I really don't know WHAT is going on with the incubators. One is 10+ years old, the other 2 years old and are identical. I am following instructions religiously, temp and humidity are maintained correctly. From now one I'm not going to incubate more than a dozen or so eggs at a time and see how that goes. The incubator thing is making me crazy. Anyone else who hatches eggs in an incubator--how many eggs do you set at once? Have you ever loaded your incubator to it's maximum number? Velvet ~:>

^^^ Hahaha...I once had to buy eggs at the market while my girls were molting, I brought them home and made a point to show the eggs to the girls to remind them what they looked like. Laying started up again shortly thereafter. :) Well...we checked both incubators and candled the eggs we could see into last night. A lot of them were clear, especially the Polish eggs. :( But I don't see my Polish ladies getting much action from my roos, the dumb boys! Other eggs have chicks, but I could not tell if they were alive or not, and how fully formed they are. No peeping or activity yet from any of the eggs, but they aren't due to hatch until beginning at 8PM Saturday night. If none of these hatch, I don't know what to think...I know that both of my roo boys are getting their job done and I don't think they have fertility issues, they are healthy fellas. We did change locations for the incubators this year, to my dining room table, in a corner of a room away from windows and doors to help protect from drafts. I THOUGHT I had a great spot, but if this batch doesn't work I'm going back to putting the darned things in the kitchen. :( On top of everything else, we are having weird weather here since yesterday, supposed to continue until Tuesday--wind, rain/hail, and tornadoes, of all things! If the power goes out, I have my broody hen contingency plan...Bear, Splash and Blue are all broody and would get to sit on the eggs. :) We checked the cam last night and have it all set up and ready to go, if hatching begins we'll fire it up and I'll notify everyone. Time will tell! Velvet !:>

Oh, I forgot to add that there is a short commercial that plays before the live webcam view begins.

Those babies hatched Sunday. It is hot here - sometimes they laying with opened mouth because it is hot here. I hope they are OK. Here is a link that might be useful: link to webcam