And here are our six new chicks: they are all Indian Game crosses. Actually, just five, the sixth one was just out of shot and is in fact virtually all black, her mum is black too and a blue egg layer. We wonder how the chick will turn out? These belong to our Red Leghorn cross who was sharing with Banana and her nest of duck eggs and who remained broody when we moved Banana and the ducklings to the stables. We pulled these eggs out from under Queenie and a couple of other broodies and instead gave them some of the bought eggs: Exchequer Leghorns, Morans and Indian Game. The reason we did this was so that the Red Leghorn had the shortest amount of time possible before the eggs hatched. One of the issues with broodies is that they can lose condition just ‘sitting around all day’ and get quite thin. This bird had been ‘sat around’ for over four weeks and if we gave her eggs to incubate from scratch that would have been another three weeks of sitting. As it was, these eggs had around two weeks to go before hatching which was slightly better!
She did well, she hatched six out of eight eggs and is so far being a very attentive mum. We will leave her in the barn for a few days - much to the annoyance of the goats we might add who actually seem a little scared of her… she does give a mean peck mind you!!!