Yesterday morning we were rather shocked to hear a very plaintive cheep as we opened up the poultry stable. As none of our hatching eggs are due till next week it was not obvious what had hatched and where it was. We tracked the sound down to Pear’s nest but the next shock was discovering a chick under Pear’s warm breast, NOT a duckling. It would appear that one of the chickens must have snuck into Pear’s nest whilst she was sitting on all her duck eggs and laid her own (in this case) blue egg (this does narrow it down as to which chicken as we only have two blue egg layers).
Trouble is that as far as we know, Pear's ducklings are not due until Tuesday at the earliest and so having a chick to look after now is not great planning. Worst case scenario is that Pear abandons her duck eggs in the mistaken belief that they won’t now hatch. Once eggs start to hatch, poultry usually carry on incubating the eggs for a maximum of 48 hours and after that, take the hatchlings off to feed and drink. By this stage, any remaining eggs are usually not destined to hatch.
Our initial plan therefore, was to give our 'chickling' to Queenie, currently sitting on 6 eggs laid by her daughter and to give said eggs back to Queenie Baby Pale. The 'chickling' had other ideas mind you as not once, not twice but FOUR times she left the warmth of Queenie and her nest and made her way back to Pear. Pear seemed very happy to have her back but we were worried about the duck eggs under her and how much longer she would carry on sitting on them.
Fast forward to today however and this morning we were rather delighted to find two ducklings. We are not quite sure whether they are early or whether we have our dates wrong. It's good news though as it means our 'chickling' has friends and hopefully more eggs may hatch over the next 24 hours...