Poor Hatch

[Mike Gilbert]

Poor hatch today. Some of the eggs got pretty cold in the coop, and then I think my incubator thermometer isn't calibrated quite right, because what did hatch came early. What did hatch includes 4 LF Blue Wheatens, 5 bantam Wheatens, six bantam Blacks and eight bantam Silvers. Can you find them all in the pics? Then there were five bantam Partridge Chanteclers and three bantam Dark Brahmas which are not pictured.    I had orignally set 74 eggs, of which 61 survived two candlings.  So there were a lot of eggs that did not hatch. 

[John W Blehm]

Are the buff looking ones the 4 LF Blue Wheatens?  If so their base down color is very different then the bantam wheatens.

[Mike Gilbert]

It's interesting.   This is a cross between a Blue Wheaten male and a Splash Wheaten female (she was the only one laying at the time so I know they were her eggs.   Three of them came out yellow and one white.    I have a hunch the yellow ones are Splash, but I will toe punch the white one to know for sure.   I'll let you know how that hunch plays out. 

[John W Blehm]

What it reminded me of was many years ago I hatched a bunch of bantam wheaten/blue wheaten eggs from you along with many of my own.  Either all or almost all of the chicks from your eggs where either whitish or yellowish and mine were the opposite.  Our lines had some difference in genotype that showed up in day-old chick phenotype.  I don't know that I/we ever figured out where they were different.
That experience came to mind about a year ago when someone was trying to tell me the difference in white and yellow chick down a way to sex them.  It wasn't a long discussion and it wasn't about sex-linked silver/gold, so I didn't agree.  With wheatens all being sex-linked gold that can't be the case, even if there was some truth to it.

[Mike Gilbert]

So that's one other thing I will be looking for.   I agree with you, but it will be interesting to see if the white chick turns out to be one gender, and the yellow ones the other gender.  If that is the case, I will do further testing with future hatches. 

[Russ Blair]

Mike what were the conclusions to this??

[Mike Gilbert]

Russ, I don't think the chick down color had anything to do with whether or not they were Splash Wheaten or Blue Wheaten.