About 2 weeks ago I answered a plea on a Facebook group for someone to take some Rosella eggs that had been removed from their roof during repairs after storm damage. I have an incubator so there was no issue with me setting it up for them.
Rosellas are a native species of parrot which lives quite widespread across Australia. There are a number of species and subspecies We get two different species in Adelaide. The Eastern Rosella and the Crimson/Adelaide Rosella.
I collected 7 little white eggs which had been out of ideal incubation temperatures for about 10 hours and popped them in the incubator. I didn't hold much hope for them. But I had been surprised before with how resilient eggs are.
About week later I received a phone call from another person who'd had some rosella eggs removed from their roof and wanted to know if I could incubate them. Being the sucker, I mean caring person I am, I took them and added them to the incubator. A small child then dobbed me into my ever patient husband! Darn kid can't keep a secret haha!
So then I had 14 eggs! The second clutch were vastly different in shade to the first clutch, much creamier in colour, so I had no issues keeping the separate. I will be curious to see if they are the same species of Rosella.
I candled them every few days, using a bright LED torch to see inside the eggs and check development of the chicks. Because the shells are so thin, it was easy to see all the veins and the shadow of the embryo gently moving around inside.
As they developed more, the eggs got darker as the chick grew bigger. Regular candling allowed me to remove eggs that had died midway through the development before we ended up with any nasty exploding rotten eggs. Two of the first batch got removed because of this.
On Monday I went to do my morning check of the eggs, turn them and check the humidity and temperature, as I usually do. It was going to be the last day I turn them because I was predicting them to hatch mid week. Turns out they were ready a little sooner...
One had started to pip. Pipping is when the chick inside breaks a small hole in the egg from the inside. From there the chick turns in the shell and break more holes right around the shell. This process can take up to 24 hours from pipping to complete hatching.
I went out for a few hours and when I came home, 3 more had signs of pipping. But it wasn't until about 9pm Monday night that the first one hatched. It wasn't even the first one to pip, you can the first pipped one just to the left of the hatchling.
I woke up at about 5:50am thanks to my husband stepping in puppy poo in the hallway, and checked on them again, another had hatched! The first to pip was still taking its sweet time! I transferred the hatched chicks and eggs into a small container so they didn't wander around the incubator or fall in the humidity trays full of water.
By the time my 'real' wake up time of 8am came around, the third one was almost out. It however did need a little intervention as the shell membrane had stuck itself firmly to the fluff on its back, and it was having great difficulty detaching from the egg shell.
The eldest also got its first feed of warmed natural yogurt. They get fed yogurt for their first meal for 3 days and this helps kick start the good bacteria in their crop before introducing the hand rearing mix.
The other two were still too new to try to feed, they don't need feeding for the first 6 or so hours as they are still absorbing the yolk sac. I went on to feed them around midday and will continue 1-2 hourly feeds during the day.
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