Breeding going well!

This seasons breeding is going well. To date I have 13 youngsters in the nest out of 14 eggs, so a great hatch percentage. The one is that failed to hatch is my mistake as I took it out of the loft to avoid smashing while waiting for the 2nd egg to be laid. A hard frost appeared that night so think accounted for the loss of this egg. We have another 22 eggs being sat at present, so if all goes well we are looking at 35 youngsters from the 1st round.

Pedigree uploads

I have busy changing the look of the stock bird page of the website. I have changed the way the details are viewable. The site now shows the pedigrees for each of the stock birds instead of the write up that used to be viewable. I think this is a big improvement to the site.

I have also been busy setting up the new Dove Release company I have created and have been busy working on the website. This is now complete and will be going 'live' once all the items have been purchased to enable me to complete orders that are made.

The forum is going well and hopefully now the breeding season is well under way the auction site will see a good many birds going up for sale. The online directory is another that will pick up with the rise of the other sites.

In my own loft I have most pairs down on eggs and waiting for the hatch dates to arrive. I have fostered a lot of eggs so in total have 18 eggs that are being sat. The weather has warmed up a little so that will assist with the hatching percentage. I had the birds routinely tested a few days ago and all showing good health. So all set for the new youngsters to arrive!

Egg Crazy!

After around 25 days of waiting for eggs we have now had 22 laid in 3 nights! The birds have well and truly gone egg crazy! I will be fostering some of the eggs off my best stock birds under feeder pairs of the race birds. I have 4 stock pairs yet to lay but these are the one who I had trouble with settling down and don't expect eggs for another week or so from these pairs. The season is well under way now and can't wait for the eggs to start hatching now!

At last!

It seems like ages ago that I updated the news on the website and I can now confirm we have had our 1st egg of 2011 laid! It had taken around 25 days but at last we have one! The weather has played a big part in the length of time but we have finally accomplished what we set out to do and that is breed an early team of youngsters. Hopefully over the next few nights the rest of the stock birds will have laid as well. I have reduced the stock numbers since the last posting and we now have 13 pairs of stock and 8 pairs of races that are paired up. The racers have been left to do as they wish as I am not keeping the eggs from them anyway and they will be used to bring up a foster round from the stock birds. I will be picking the rings up in the next week or so and we have ordered 100 this year and will be hoping to have a really strong team available when the racing starts come July!