It's easy to lose track of which chicks hatched when. So it's a good habit to photo them at various stages... Even if there's not time to post the photos right away, going back over the weeks with a photo album application like Shotwell makes it possible to figure out which set of chicks came out of their shells on which day...

These chicks all went to other homes but they came out of their shells and the incubator from May 7th to May 9th.. I'm wondering if the hatch-rate is bad because I take the early chicks out too soon and the temperature and humidity changes make it harder for the other chicks to complete their growth and break their shells. A neighbor with a lot of chickens and experience said he leaves the chicks in the incubator for 3 days.. And he has a lot of chicks running around. In two weeks a few of his Shamo 軍鶏 eggs should hatch along with a few Turkey eggs that I put in a week earlier.. The 7 day difference is convenient, just remember you started the Turkey eggs on a Wedesday and Thursday then start the chicken eggs the next Wednesday night...

Going back over the pixel fed posts reminded me I was calling the supermarket egg birds JiDokKo from hearsay. Later I found the producer's 生産者's bags myself to see that they are labelled JiDori.. People might use the word to refer to the way the birds are raised out in the open on dirt not in a green-house fan-blown animal factory that smells awful and seems unhealthy for everyone, avian and human involved...

#Incubators #Hatchlings #JiDoriEggs #JiDori #JiDokKo #地鶏 #Chickens

A JiDokKo hen (probably a Shamo 軍鶏 a Hy-Line Brown ボリス・ ブラウン cross) went broody at the neighbor's place under a bush by the fence. They noticed when they chopped down weeds by their wall from a the field that mostly surrounds their place. She was really excited calling me over to see.. I was hoping the hen would get up and join the rest of her night companions up in the cinnamon tree but she was still there a few hours later in the evening. The neighbor ran around getting water and bowls set up for the hen, and straw too, but she was afraid she'd forget to do something and a hen tragedy might occur. They are really busy farmers so I just moved the bird and the ten eggs she was on into a wooden apple box no one else was using.. It didn't go to well. The hen won't settle down in there and keeps trying to go back. I locked her in there and she settled down for the night and seemed ok in the morning. In the afternoon she was pacing the cage so I opened it up and she headed back to the spot she'd originally chosen. I moved 4 eggs over under her.. I'm not sure how much hope there is for the eggs with all the moving and pacing but at least she'll have a chance for a successful brood. Tonight I have to remember to check if she's still there and consult about rigging up some sort of mesh around her or moving her into their big antique ceramic barrel that is on it's side nearby. The old man already set it up with straw just in case.. They are sweet. It would be nice if the birds just started laying their egg gifts over their. The couple only buys brown eggs when their really tired. There so busy I'd be tired all the time living at their pace.. Our schedules don't match up much some weeks so there's no chance to run eggs over to them.. So if the hens started doing in-yard delivery it would be helpful...
#BroodyHen #JiDokKo #JiDokKoHen #BackyardChickens #NeighborYardChicken

"JiDokKo" hens.. Tree Hens..
Door Front Egg Delivery.. Not sure who it is.. it could be the big brown JiDori bird.. Now that I think of it I don't think I saw her this morning and last night I got back late from a night class.. Maybe a weasel or something figured out how to climb up the tree and eat them?? I better start taking head counts more regularly...

#JiDokKo #じどっこ #雌鶏 #じどっこ雌鶏 #軍鶏けい #軍鶏 かな？ 軍鶏とボリスブラウンのミッスじゃないなか？

This rooster Mathew (was Matilda 'till he started crowing and mounting) was beautiful when I dropped him off to accompany the four hens... but he had to find a way to climb up and around the wall somehow to get in with the next door 10-hen rooster, his own seed Daddy. It's been weeks and they both still seem to be hurting, they tore each other up.. I'm guessing the black around their faces is where they tore each other's skin off.. their legs seem hurt too.. it felt like he was giving me an accusing eye for dropping him off here.. 😨😱
#JiDokKo #Shamo ? #じどっこ　#鶏

「じどっこ」か　軍鶏とボリスブラウンか？

The other young rooster climbed up and around to fight this rooster, his own SeedDaddy and now they both look like pained walking wounded... I guess they tore the skin off each other's faced and hurt each other's legs..


#じどっこ #鶏 ##JiDokKo

New Babies!!

#雛 #地鶏 #烏骨鶏 #黒い烏骨鶏 #じどっこ #じどっこ烏骨鶏 #JiDori #JiDokKo #SilkyChicks

The JiDokKo birds are interesting.. probably mostly of Shamo軍鶏　descent but not very aggressive so far... We might be eating the beautiful red rooster thud weekend... I've gotten thus urge to focus on Silkies for thrur popular gift eggs and incubating abilities and the huge JiDori birds (probably Amakusa DaiOu 天草大王) for frequent big eggs and occasional turkey-like feasts... the variety is fascinating and I guess it's more sustainable to keep some hybrid vigor around...
#BackyardChickens #Jidori #JiDokKo #Silkies #烏骨鶏 #地鶏

New Chicks: mostly from JiDokKo eggs from the FukuroNoKai (Owl Association) farmer's market, but two are from Silky eggs from that market's table too. The brown striped ones may be from birds that were hatched from JiDori eggs from a local supermarket. Those birds got huge and I want to try hatching a bunch of them.. They are labeled as JiDori.. so they could be anything I guess.. Maybe Amakusa Daiou which is what the look like, I think...

#JiDori #SilkyChicks #BabyChicks #JiDokKo #地鶏

The "made in Japan" "Showa Furanki" seems to be working great.. It's not the most high-end version so I had to remember to remove the arms that rotate to move the egg-rotating frame back and forth. A cheaper plastic sweatshop incubator came without one of the settings panels attached so I couldn't tell it to stop rotating the eggs... The cheap plastic machine lost the ability to maintain a high enough temperature too.. It was all too irritating to pay attention to so I splurged and ordered this one... I e-mailed the guy with a question while I was setting it up, the rotator arms are awkward to work with. The guy called me a short time later with suggestions.. You can't even hope for a legible instruction manual in Japanese or English when you order one from a on-line Leviathan of a shop that you don't want to support in anyway... These ShoWa Furanki people seem to have pride and competence.. The eggs are mostly from a nice farmer's market around 10 JiDokKo eggs and 4 "Silky" eggs. One Silky egg is from the yard, and two huge eggs are from a fellow chicken aficionado from the UK. His birds were hatched from Miyazaki JiDokKo eggs by a junior high school student. I'm guessing these descendents of the Miyazaki JiDokKo labeled eggs are throwbacks to the huge (90cm 7kg) Amakusa DaiOu birds. The huge eggs went in two days after the JiDokKo and Silky eggs so I'm still hoping for a big chick I feel lucky go get this many.. The JidokKo roosters injured each other a week or so before I got the eggs so the nice lady was worried about fertilization rates. But when did injuries keep one from fertilizing with any chance one gets? The silky eggs from there before didn't develop.. The huge eggs spent the day in an "eco" shopping bag that was in and out of the car and carried around a beach and stores for most of a day. I was told fertilized eggs are viable for 10 days but I worried about shocks: any jarring while in the bag, or temperature changes from the car... #孵卵器 #JiDokKO

Tree Birds... The little red Chabo and the round brown hen have been finding places for the night outside the cages for some time now.. Just recently the lighter brown young JidokKko has started also. It seemed to cramped for more than two birds to be in the little hand-made dog-house on the big night-cage roof so I would grab one and put them in the night cage while closing them all up for night-time safety.. I guess this rooster is the most adamant about disliking the transplant.. I've seen this dark-necked rooster seeming to be trying to eat the little gray Nagoya Kochin chick.. That a young Silky Hen was able to hatch one of the eggs from the supermarket, and egg with no indication of having been fertilized... It's miraculous and it will be fascinating to see how the little chick develops.. So I was thinking the next soup and BBQ gathering might feature dark-necked JiDokKo rooster, but now that he's sleeping up in the tree I'm tempted to keep him around in the hopes of developing a strain of low-maintenance tree birds I can let loose in an orchard somewhere and only have to visit every couple days or so... I think that's what Masanobu Fukuoka did over in Ehime Prefecture.. When I read that decades ago I was wondering what a "Jidori" bird was: Japanese local heirloom birds.. or their revived strains at any rate...

#BackYardChickens #JiDokKo #TreeBrids #TreeRooster #Treehen #じどっこ #じどっこ雄鶏 #JiDokKoRooster