Well… somewhat remarkably ALL SIXTEEN of Queenie Baby Pale’s (QBP) eggs have hatched. She hatched her ten and Queenie hatched the six eggs we gave her when she also became broody. We weren’t too out with our guesstimate of a hatching date either: we had down the 10th – a mere three days away. We have a fabulous array of colours from all yellow through to the wonderful golden stripy brown chick in the photo. They look a very healthy, fluffy bunch.
Sadly though we were missing one by the end of the day: no idea how or why but having moved QBP and her brood from the livestock barn into the main poultry area (to a nestbox next door but one to Queenie), when we later checked on them all, QBP had 11 chicks and Queenie just 4. And then at bedtime the numbers had changed to 12 and 3!!
Is QBP 'reclaiming' chicks that should have been hers anyway? And what happened to number 16? Did it get picked up by one of the older birds in the midst of a nestbox swap?
We have never had chicks been taken by our other poultry before, and we might have thought that if any chick was going to get picked off by another one of our own birds, it would have been our lovely ‘chickling’, as hatched by Pear the duck - and still going strong btw. We will see what the morning brings and keep our fingers crossed, but no doubt we will be doing lots of checking at very frequent intervals tomorrow.
Especially as Banana has begun to hatch her ducklings as well: three to date and counting…