Up until Friday, I had never experienced having a chicken hatching and raising chicks, but all this changed when I finally had the space and opportunity to to put some eggs under a broody.
Buffy with the chicks she hatched
It actually started with our cross breed hen Toffee who was insistent she wanted to sit on some eggs. Her father is a Light Sussex, which is a fairly heavy duel purpose breed, and her mother is a Golden Legbar, which is a lighter laying breed. Unfortunately her mother did once hatch an egg, but didn't know what to do once it hatched, so I wasn't entirely confident that Toffee would make a good mamma.
Toffee was going to be broody no matter where I put her!
Early on, the clumsy, heavy girl broke one of the eggs getting the contents over the other eggs. I gave her the benefit of the doubt because I forgot that there was a brick under where she was determined to nest. I removed that and hoped for the best. Two weeks in my araucana bantam, Buffy, went broody, so I decided to try some new eggs under her in the broody area. Unfortunately, she didn't want to go in the nesting box any more than Toffee did and just stole Toffee's eggs whenever she's got off to eat, causing her to complain loudly. I was about to take Buffy out, when I realised Toffee had stepped on another egg and broken it, so she went back to the flock instead and Buffy took over. Toffee didn't seem too worried about her eggs once back in the flock and forgot about being broody!
Buffy taking her job very seriously
I was concerned that all the egg that had gotten on the other eggs would cause bacteria to get in and inhibit air circulation, but candling revealed that they were continuing to develop, so I couldn't bring myself to swap them out. I'm glad I didn't, because on Friday I went to check for pips there was at least one already hatched! By Saturday afternoon we had 7 little bantam chicks and just one that failed to hatch.
On Thursday I'd hatched 15 large fowl eggs for someone, but they only wanted 10. Unable to sell the last five over the weekend, I took one up to Buffy to see what she'd do. She merely looked at it, then at me, then gave it a little preen. I left it with her while I fetched the other four and it was next to Buffy when I came back; so they've all joined the family!
A mixed family; the large fowl chicks are nearly twice the size of the bantams
So now Buffy is a first time mamma to 12 chicks and if I had any more I think she'd happily take them in too!
I have some short video clips of her and the chicks on my Instagram page. It's public, so you can view them without having your own account of you wish.
The Celestial Daily Challenge by @sirknight inspired me to share this story of new life for the Tuesday animal kingdom.
