Spring is such a busy time of the year for me, I have been trying to hatch eggs from my chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys...some successful...some not so much. I have really been disappointed with the goose and duck hatches. I only had 7 ducks hatch the second go round and that was out of 42 eggs...the major rain we got seemed to have ruined several batches of the goose eggs I set too, out of the last 24 goose eggs, I have only had two hatch. I have more in the incubator now, we shall see how it goes, those that I set on March 10, do not look viable...I candled them and put them in the hatcher anyway hoping my eyes deceived me...but when you can't see them moving at lockdown, you pretty much know after awhile. You can see the differences in the shadows, some eggs look almost translucent in spots. I have successfully hatched one turkey so far. It is kinda like the first goose, I set eggs and only one developed...not all of them were fertile. If things don't go awry I should have a batch hatch around the thirteenth. I have hatched some eggs through the mail too, not great hatches but at least different bloodlines to breeds like my Jubilee And Lavender Orpington's, more Isbars, a few Lemon Cuckoo Orpingtons. I have acquired some Mottled Java and Welsummer chicks that a guy I sell eggs to picked up for me at Tractor Supply, his neighbor works there and calls him when they have special breeds. I have some Mottled Java eggs in the incubator now too, so I am hoping with the two or three Black Java's I have I can breed more blacks out of the Mottled Java's and Black Java's I do have.
I won a rare breed auction on ducks too. The eggs should hatch around the fifteenth along with the turkey poults due at about the same time. Ancona, Saxony and Welsh Harlequins will also not be a great hatch, about 50 percent of the eggs are developing, but we need more girls in our flock and rarer breeds than Rouen and Khaki Campbell's. We lost two female ducks to drowning...the males hold their heads under the water when they mate, sometimes too long. My husband loves the waterfowl, the geese are his favorite, but he loves giving the babies baths and watching them swim. They are messy little things but grow really fast. Speaking of ducks...we have our first broody duck! We have one female Golden Hybrid 300...and she is sitting on some duck eggs in a kennel on the back porch, I am not sure if any will hatch...but she seems pretty determined to hatch some out.
This time of year we have a lot of broody hens too. I my big coop I have at least eleven broodies, some are two to a nest box. In the Coop we call the Condo, there are five broody hens...two nest boxes have two each and yesterday I noticed a Cream Legbar in one of the floor nest boxes sitting in it all day. Even the Chicken Tractor area has two broody hens...I have a kennel that has a covered cat box in it that also has two hens sitting in it. In a few weeks, we will have baby chicks coming out of our ears. I have been picking up chicks as I find them, I snagged a few that didn't make it because the hens didn't keep them warm enough when we had freezes. I check the nest boxes more often now. I found a lone chick running around the yard by itself about a week ago, I could hear it and started looking all inside the coop, out in the run I heard it better but couldn't find it...went outside and the little thing was running around beside the big coop with no supervision. Lol, it was kind of funny...but I grabbed it and carried it around in my shirt while I checked on the other chickens.
We did finally start on my breeding pens, but ended up taking what we did apart. I started over and basically am rethinking my design. I was going to have the coops raised at least two feet off of the ground, but decided to just raise them a little and put them on cinder blocks and make them taller. I was going to make them more like my chicken tractor shape, but now I think it will be closer to the big coop in style. It has been nice the past few days, but I have not worked on them...instead I have been fencing in my new garden area. I need to get plants in the ground, I have tilled and put composted chicken manure over half of the new garden. I can't plant until I have finished fencing though, the rabbits and chickens ate everything last year...so this year I am putting chicken wire over the bottom section of fencing, moved the garden to the front of the house so the chickens aren't tempted to jump the fence and eat the tender green shoots rising out of the ground and enclosing the whole thing so that the dogs can't run through it and destroy the plants. Yep, busy time of the year...
