For the last two days we had not seen sight nor sound of Queenie Baby Pale (one of Queenie the bantam’s hatchlings from last year who lays ‘pale’ eggs - as opposed to Queenie Baby Blue who lays… ‘blue’ eggs. We really do get the whole idea of original naming conventions don’t we?)
Anyway, we were a little worried, as despite seeing no evidence of any kind of predators: foxes, weasels, stoats etc, the first thought whenever poultry goes missing is: ‘has it been taken?’ There was also one afternoon this week when all the poultry seemed on high alert and the alpacas too seemed somewhat focused on something in the hedgerow.
However, this morning BEFORE we let all the birds out, we spied QBP near one of the drinkers, looking fit and healthy and without a care in the world and so our NEXT thought became: 'has she gone broody and is there a nest of eggs somewhere?'
And the answer to that is yes: once she had finished feeding and drinking, we followed her as she headed off towards the barn and there, sandwiched between some hay bales and the wall, we spied her snuggling back down on a clutch of her eggs, looking safe and secure and very pleased with herself.
We had slightly wondered about the possibility of her sitting on eggs somewhere based on the fact she is a daughter of Queenie. Queenie is our most broody bird and we usually let her sit on eggs when she wants to, resulting in her raising three to four broods a year. She herself has gone broody again this week and we were debating whether it really is too late to hatch out some chicks! It seems as though she has passed on her ‘broody’ genes to her daughters, both of whom have raised one set of chicks each this year and now QBP is set to raise a second. We will probably give Queenie a few eggs as well now too. We don't of course have a date of hatching for QBP’s eggs as we don’t have a start date – we will just have to check her each day for the next couple of weeks… Exciting!!