Our little flock

Mama Hen is still sitting on a freshly hatched chick from last night and her remaining eggs while she sticks her head out to eat with the older babies. The first to hatch was very late Tuesday night or very early Wednesday morning. Every time I say I'm going to take away her other eggs when I get home from work... another one hatches. 1 hatched, then another, then two more... I thought that would be it but we got another last night and she's still parked on those eggs.

I guess I did a bad job of estimating the age of the chicks in the eggs when I candled and tried to pick only the ones that were around the same stage in development.

ameliadanielle said:

Mama Hen is still sitting on a freshly hatched chick from last night and her remaining eggs while she sticks her head out to eat with the older babies. The first to hatch was very late Tuesday night or very early Wednesday morning. Every time I say I'm going to take away her other eggs when I get home from work... another one hatches. 1 hatched, then another, then two more... I thought that would be it but we got another last night and she's still parked on those eggs.

I guess I did a bad job of estimating the age of the chicks in the eggs when I candled and tried to pick only the ones that were around the same stage in development.

Click to expand...

What a good little momma!! I love the little chipmunk one in with the yellow ones. To cute, the whole thing is just to cute!!!

She abandoned the remaining eggs and led her 6 babies into the backyard yesterday morning. So I got them settled in a dog house with hay and put their feeder and waterer right outside. It wasn't raining yesterday so we let her take them out. I was going to let nature take it's course but two of her eggs were peeping. We don't have an incubator so I put them in a box with a heating pad, wrapped in a dish towel. We were at 93% humidity outside yesterday so I was pretty confident they wouldn't lack humidity. When I picked my daughter up from school I brought the eggs on the heating pad back home from work with me to see if I could get her to sit on them again as they were peeping. One of them hatched in the car while I waited in the pick up line. So we immediately came home to round up mama and babies and get them back in the garage.

Tragedy. Mama hen was being guarded by our great pyrenees. She was behind her, sitting, and the dog was watching the yard keeping the rest of the flock away from her. I picked her up, she had one lone baby left. My chickens who have consistently refused to use any nest box I have ever made had kicked mama hen and her babies out of the little doghouse and they had laid 3 eggs in there. Mama hen is angry. I don't know what happened. No bodies, no blood, not even a feather. Gone without a trace. I combed front yard and back. I have no clue what happened. I know the dog wasn't touching her or even trying to when we got home. I don't know if I should blame the dog or something else. My dog did kill two chicks in March, but she didn't eat them. She played with them and licked them all over and I'm sure they had heart attacks because there were no wounds on them and she brought them to me.

I am at a complete loss as to what happened in 4 and a half hours. But it seems like all of our chickens took refuge under shelter yesterday as one of them laid an egg under a sun shelter they haven't gotten under or used since summer was over. We do have hawks and owls around here. So it makes sense that they got snatched up. We're so heartbroken. So is mama hen. She's back to sitting on eggs. She is back up to 3 chicks. We're going to let her have them for a few days in the garage then we're going to take them and raise them in bathroom as we have done with chicks in the past.

Our three little survivors. Their cage was just cleaned this morning... it's trashed and covered in poop again already. Lol. These are possibly some of the messiest chickens we've raised inside.

I've got to get some new pictures of our three babies that aren't babies anymore. It's been a while since the last update. We've been so busy. It's been crazy at the store since Christmas and we just moved our whole store last week. I finally have a broody silkie, this Saturday will make week 2 on the nest. She's sitting on some silky eggs and some of the laying hen eggs from our layers and our splash blue laced red Wyandotte rooster. She's the meanest broody we've had around here. Our laying hens took a month off of laying in January (the silkies didn't) and now we're back to a full nest box every day. Our young Wyandotte pullets we got this fall are also laying now. I'm planning on sending the older hens to freezer camp in August when they are due for their 18 month molt, and I'm going to be looking for some easter egger babies to hopefully have laying by the time that happens. I think we only have one silkie mix out of our three little chickens we raised this winter. I didn't think our Wyandotte rooster had been with the flock long enough to do his job, but the dark red and peach colored pullets have no feathered feet, no crests. I would assume our game rooster we had before getting the Wyandotte was to blame but they have been very large and fast growing and heavy bodied like our laying hens. They are also speckled looking which resembles what I've seen in crossed chickens from laced birds. They're a week younger than our silkie mix and they're now twice as big as her. It's going to be interesting to see what hatches out from our eggs this time. As our Wyandotte rooster has completely taken over the whole flock of layers, even the young pullets that were previously excluded by the older hens. Our silkie rooster has also calmed down, his flock consists of a trio of small yard/game birds we were given, our three young hens, and three silkie hens. He still occasionally chases off our Wyandotte rooster at feeding time which is the funniest thing I've ever seen, because our Wyandotte rooster is huge and feels like he weighs 15 pounds when I pick him up and our poor silkie rooster feels like a ball of fluff with nothing under it. This Sunday will be our first real day off in ages and I'll have to get some new pictures.

Update on the the three survivor chicks. They're 4 months old now. One... I am thinking is a rooster.



Only one silkie mix... so either the very young American game got in behind our silkie roosters back... or our Splash Blue Laced Red Wyandotte went to work quickly after being put with our hens.

Looking roosterish to me.