Babies Everywhere!

My broody hens have been hatching babies here and there, I have incubated more eggs and have chicks, a goose and turkeys in the house brooders and ducks in the feed room brooder, plus brooders on my back porch.  I still have a lot of broody hens, a broody duck and a broody goose too.  The goose and ducks are my first broodies of waterfowl, I keep waiting for a turkey to go broody next.

I have babies hatching in one incubator, maybe four goose eggs will hatch around the 12th of May and trying again with some Ancona duck eggs which should hatch about the same time.  I gave my broody duck new eggs...I had given her eggs but she kicked the ones I gave her out of the nest and laid her own.  Apparently none of them were fertile...she kicked the last one out of the nest yesterday.  She was very happy this time to have eggs, I gave her 8 and she tucked them under her as fast as I gave them to her.  I have had such bad luck hatching goose eggs this year, I was glad to see one of my females go broody.  I am not sure she will have any hatch either, but she has quite a few under her...she is taking the other two females eggs too.  We go into the coop and give her food and water and sometimes all three females are grouped together and they sleep with the broody at night.

I am happy to say I have been successful hatching my turkey eggs, I love the little chirpy sounds they make.  I have about 8 turkey poults at the moment, one that looks different, I want to keep.  This one looked almost black when it hatched.  It has lightened up slightly but has very dark eyes and dark legs too.  I guess it is a genetic mutation...I want to see what it will look like when it gets all of its feathers.  Bad thing is happening with my female turkeys, they are laying eggs outside of the fence, one of them was injured and it looked like two possible dog bites, she had two holes in her side under her wing and has been on my porch for weeks, she is healing well, but still has a way to go.  Another turkey hen laid a clutch of 15 eggs under the stairs of my shed, but she had dug a depression and we received five inches of rain before I found them...I thought it best to toss all of them.  She has decided to lay elsewhere and I am worried she may get attacked by the dogs next door too.

I stay busy, cleaning, taking care of babies, broodies and house chores...and got my garden planted finely.  The wild dewberries are ripening and I pick them when I have the chance, and picked my first blueberries yesterday.  I have four grapevines that flowered this year so that is good...just 6 more to go!  We had late freezes so I don't have much fruit on my trees, except maybe peaches...and I need to spray some Neem Oil or Dormant Oil on them.

I started my breeding pens...so, yeah just busy.