Babies!

Ok, it was only in April that I let my hens hatch out some babies.  Well, I once again have broody hens.  Yep, Brown Racer is broody for the third time in a year!  Ms McCluckinson is broody for the second time.  I figured it would be a good time to buy hatching eggs of a couple of breeds I wanted and let them hatch the chicks.  The other hens laid eggs in the nest boxes for a few days and I let them keep them while I searched for chocolate egg layers and blue egg layers from eBay.

I got the eggs in the mail about a week later but the blue eggs were damaged and I sent the seller a message telling them they needed to pack differently, the eggs were smashed from too tight of packing materials.  I sent pictures.  I pulled all of the eggs from my broody hens and put them in the incubator.  I put half of both kinds of eggs under each broody hen...now it is just a matter of waiting 21 days!  But, because of the packing problem the seller on eBay was sending replacement eggs!  

In the mean time, two of my Dominique hens go broody too!  Well, I only have 7 hens laying...when a hen goes broody and sits on eggs, they stop laying eggs.  But because the seller was shipping replacements I was glad for one more broody.  Well, until they started rotating nest boxes.  When the other eggs came in I split them too.  I only have four nest boxes though...when you have four broody hens and four nest boxes, you need more nest boxes for the other hens to lay their eggs in...or they will get in the nest box with the broody hens and lay.  Then at one point it looked like I had six broody hens!  The Dominique hens kicked Brown Racer out of her nest box so she climbed in with Ms McCluckinson.  Then Ms McCluckinson climbed in with a Dominique.  They all started stealing eggs!  They would get into a nest box and roll one out and over to another, I guess 6 eggs each was not enough...so I left the eggs being laid in the nest boxes.

I think it was last Monday that I heard the first chick in the incubator...I had not done lockdown yet and the egg turner was still in the incubator...and a chick had hatched!  I wasn't really ready for it, I thought I had a few more days.  So I set up a brooder for it and took out the eggs and candled them.  Took a few out that were not fertile, and put the rest on lockdown.  I have had two eggs a day hatch all week.  I am up to 16 babies now in the brooder.

Yesterday I went out to give the Momma hens sitting on the eggs some watermelon and grapes and saw an eggshell in the run.  I decided to check under the hens to see if a chick had hatched...no chick found.  Since I was down to three eggs in the incubator, I decided to confiscate all of the eggs from the hens and put them in the incubator to finish the hatch.  It has been really hot out lately and the hens were not drinking enough water...I didn't want my hens to die, I took them all out of the nest boxes and put them outside.  I closed the coop after I did that because brown racer ran back up and sat on the empty nest.

After the eggs sat in the incubator for a few hours I went and checked on them, two of them had bubbles coming out of them...trashed them before they exploded.  I woke up this morning and one of my remaining three eggs had hatched.  The ones I took away from the hens should start hatching tomorrow if the hens didn't damage them too badly.