In between the horrors of losing Saturn and now hand rearing the gorgeous Pluto, we have had some more chicks hatch. These are Orpingtons (various colours). There should have been more but having begun with two of our Indian Game hens sitting on 9 eggs each (in the barn), we now have just four chicks. It all began so well but the first disaster was one of the hens deciding, after a week, that she was bored with sitting and as such, she headed back to the stables. It was only when she had taken flight that we found that four of her eggs were missing. We put the remainder under the second hen who, bless her, continued to sit really well right up until the day before pipping where for reasons that cannot be explained, she began to discard and crush many of her eggs. We ended up moving the last of them, seven in total and popping them under a heat lamp where carefully and slowly we ‘unpicked’ the shells and allowed the resulting chicks to dry off under the heat. We really needed to have set up an incubator in order to have the heat AND humidity but time was against us. In the end we are lucky to have ended up with four birds and are just really hoping they are all hens!!!
The most amazing thing though is that we ended up giving the chicks BACK to mum (on the basis it would be better for them and easier for us) and she is being great! We have them all in the Broody wing and are very confident that she is doing a fab job!!!
We have had fun and games this year with our broodies to be sure: we have kept detailed records so next year, we will know which birds to give eggs to and which ones not!!! It has on the whole been the Indian Games that have been the trouble makers although as both this example, and that of the hen who adopted the eight birds given up on at five weeks, shows, they make great mums – they are just no good at the sitting and hatching bit!!!