Spring Chicks, part 2

Eventually, four of the eight eggs hatched. We gave the remaining four two more days to hatch, but they didn't. When we checked, one had developed but never hatched, one had started to develop but quit, and two had never even started. I felt that was a good outcome, from eggs shipped from New Jersey to California.

They were soon up and about. I let them get settled in their new box under a heat lamp before adding food and water. They were eager and active, all good eaters from the start.

The black and white one is the smallest. She hatched with a crooked wing that hangs down, but I wouldn't consider her unfit. She may not ever be Show Quality, but this isn't a recognized breed anyway.

Kermit describes their heritage:



The great grandmother of these chicks is a tiny white colloncas hen named Lima that came from an agricultural college in Lima Peru. The father, Raisin, is a tiny violaceous basket bantam of the colloncas type. He looks like a violet black sequin.  Raisin's maternal great grandfather and maternal grandmother were closely-related  Rapa Nui colloncas- violaceous- tailed, the progenitors that the Dutch took to Europe and turned into Quail Bantam, but the Rapanui equivalent, violaceous and flighty.  Raisin's maternal line was bred in a more or less closed gene pool, only descendants of little white Lima and the old violaceous rooster from Rapanui. He came fromYamamoto, Raisin's paternal line. That line comes from a similarly closed gene pool with black colloncas Iwamiya brought back from Peru bred to Wallikiki basket-bantam, an Oceania equivalent of the Rapanui basket bantam, but the Wallikiki is not violaceous. The females are orange breasted orange birds. So we had two distinct lines of Colloncas X Basket Bantam. Their composite is Raisin, these chicks' father..

The mother of the blue eggs was an Andes, a tailed Colloncas, Tiny.  The white eggs were from  a Paco hen descended from Chilean stock. 

Regardless- you've  a composite of very rare cultural monument land races - "Incan Basket."

Then

They stayed in the plastic storage container for two weeks, until they were wild to fly around. They are very active. The container had to have a wire mesh top on it at all times. They were soon ready to fly out. Then they went into a larger plastic container, still with the wire mesh cover. With a stick to perch on, they had a few more things to do.