Chickens

[R.R. Book]

At least Soc if they're put into a large dog pen, then your rationale makes sense, and their lives would be happier than in battery cage conditions.  The flock could be placed outdoors in a larger pen in sunshine and brought in for foul weather (no pun intended)...

[ilinda]

Great news, it looks like.
The guy i'm talking with says he too got his chickens from Germany and that there's [according to him] one source in Germany. But he was lucky since he knew a guy [...] and got his live. But there's more.
He says he knew a guy going to Iceland and asked him to get some fresh bloodlines. Great, right?! Because of the pandemic this other guy has yet to go, but the important thing is that 'Europe' is working on the problem, so to speak... And i'm apparently in the thick of it... 

As mentioned before, this genetic issue has been quite severe; with only 4000 chickens in Iceland and maybe 1000 in the USA, this is a (land)race close to 'instinction'. 1000 chickens in the entire USA! Really, that's next to nothing. And don't even get me started on Europe; countries like Germany and Holland are usually at the forefront of this kind of thing and if they've no genetic diversity to speak of, that's saying quite a bit.

Wow, didn't realize the genetic bottleneck of Icelandic chickens was so severe!  Keep us posted of your endeavor.

[Socrates]

My 2nd attempt at hatching chickens has also failed. Not one of the dozen showed any signs of development. This was a result worse than the first one!

One of my quail hens was broody for a week, then she gave up on it. That's too bad [this type of quail is known to brood poorly] but it was a much better run than i've ever seen; never saw one of them stay on a nest longer than 2 or 3 days.
I took 12 of those eggs and put them in my incubator. Let's see if this machine actually works anyway...

I'm going to wait for that and perhaps go buy some chickens afterwards. Which was first, chicken or egg? Well, maybe in the end it must've been chicken...
I am not discouraged but apparently getting some proper eggs to hatch isn't as cut-n-dried as one might think.