Curious thing about birds, they only lay one egg a day and generally hatch accordingly, one a day. Here is one of our hatches in progress. The other two hatchlings you see are one and two days older. The remaining eggs also hatched in the next couple of days. It is not always the case that all eggs hatch. I also have one pair that no matter how many hatch, only three remain alive. Must be that they know they cannot care for more than that.
This much I can say at this early stage, it won't be a blue mask. Blue masks are born with white down. All the other breeds in our aviary are born with this orange down.
There are 39 photos I took in this series and I'm posting every single one of them. The viewer, however, will only hold 10.
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Hatching Series of 39
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Hatchling Series of 39
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Hatchling Series of 39
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Hatchling Series of 39
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After posting all these photos I've decided this little one just had to be my pet. I removed her from her parents at 4 weeks old--about 2 weeks sooner than fledging on her own--and began hand-feeding her. Her? No, you can't tell if it's a male or female. I just calls 'em like I sees 'em and end up right about 85% of the time. And this one answers to Daisy.
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Then You Want It For A Pet
It appears Daisy instinctively knows how to ride a dog.
I thought a flipbook would do this scene more justice than a single photo layout.
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Well here's a case of the other 15%. Boy did I call this one wrong. I won't disgust you with how at such a young age I could determine Daisy was a he after all but it wasn't pretty. It was very hard to put this in perspective after calling him Daisy for so long but with a little help from my friends I settled on Davey whereby I could then actually begin to think of him as a he. Poor little guy.
