Bog Myrtle & Peat

Despite having been lent a cracking “covina” fully automatic incubator, it looks like I’m set for another partridge disaster. I was sent two dozen eggs through the post on Tuesday and it was obvious that  they had been very badly packaged. If you held the polystyrene packaging upside down, you could hear the eggs plopping out of their polystyrene slots. Several were cracked and there was yolk all over the inside of the top tier of eggs. I contacted the breeder and he sent another dozen eggs free of charge, but it looks like I’ve blown a large part of my budget for the year on eggs which won’t hatch.

I candled them today and found no signs of life in any of the eggs. One or two might be worth carrying on with, but having spent almost £30 on eggs which are now doomed to do little more than make a smell, I’m a bit peeved. I suppose it’s all part of the experience of buying eggs online, and while I must say that it’s been surprising just how difficult it is to get hold of grey partridge eggs, it’s part of the reason why I wanted to keep my own breeding stock so that I won’t have this problem next year. I know that it’s a long shot, but if anyone reads this and might know where I can get hold of grey partridge as d/o or poult, I’d be very pleased to hear from them.

It could be that I’ll get a good hatch from the replacement eggs (which were very well packed), but that still leaves me with, at best, around a dozen chicks. I had planned to get around thirty partridges this year, but I suppose I had planned for all sorts which never came off. I suppose there is still the master plan to get hold of black grouse poults this autumn, so that’s some salve to the problem.

In the meantime, as if to rub salt into the wound, I found these two sandpiper chicks in the garden this evening. The sandpipers don’t need an incubator with all the bells and whistles to get their chicks up, and while I wish them well, I envy them horribly.