September 10, 2010

Matters of the Hearth...

Chickens.

We got another chicken yesterday when my son turned 3 (more on that in the next post)
Then again this morning chicken number 4 had hatched, so we now have 2 hens with 2 babies each.

Hen A - was moved to a box outside, but still in the chicken coop, when she got broody

Seen here with her 2 babies (just hatched)



She was moved to ensure the comfort of the other Hens in laying so we could still collect some eggs.

Then came:
Hen B - Went boody in the same nesting spot we moved Hen A from about 2 weeks after we moved her.

She went broody sitting on 1 egg, the next day had 2, and eventually she ended up with 8, only 2 hatched.

Hen B with her 2 lovely chicks.



In the mean time all the other chooks where laying under Hen A, so when she had 13 eggs I finally got sick of all the eggs being laid there and I marked them all with a texta so I could collect eggs daily that where unmarked.
A week or so ago marked eggs started to go missing, we suspected Rats but have since learned that older eggs explode under the Hen and she will 'clean up' the mess.
We were starting to come to the conclusion that we would get no chickens from Hen A as she had been sitting 2 weeks longer than Hen B and Hen B's chicks are a week old, being hatched on the first day of spring.
Now, a week later, Hen A has her own 2 chickens, Hen B had abandoned her eggs a few days ago so I removed them, Hen A is still quite protective of her eggs so obviously she still wants to try and hatch some more.
They will stay with her until i am happy that she has abandoned them then they will be removed.
We have been collecting 3-4 eggs daily from the remaining 8 Hens that are not mothers.

The Hens and our Rooster (we call him Rooter, original huh! lol), having a feed of vegie scraps, missing are mum and bubs A...(pictured above)



and Blue hen here, sitting to lay...




A few days since I wrote this also, the afternoon of the day this was written we lost the little yellow chick from Hen A.
So only 3 chicks now.

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