Breeding silkied Cochin bantams to the Standard

[NanaK]

We sometimes get hurricanes. Our land is full of huge pine trees. I love the shade in summer. It gets really hot and humid here. When those storms come through I am pacing back a forth through the house watching them sway and checking the coop. Makes me a nervous wreck!

@JacinLarkwell I'll bet that gave you a scare! Hope everyone came out okay.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I hope the chicken trailer park, or at least its occupants, went mostly unscathed at least! That's a big fear of mine, though we pretty infrequently get storms strong enough to produce tornadoes here and the woods deflects most of the wind from them, thankfully.

Oh yeah. All 5 were fine once I found them. I have the photos in the prefab thread of it when it was upright again but not straightened out

 

[JacinLarkwell]

We sometimes get hurricanes. Our land is full of huge pine trees. I love the shade in summer. It gets really hot and humid here. When those storms come through I am pacing back a forth through the house watching them sway and checking the coop. Makes me a nervous wreck!

@JacinLarkwell I'll bet that gave you a scare! Hope everyone came out okay.

It wasn't a real tornado thankfully, just a really bad windstorm that was too much for the old frame and sent it toppling into the others. Unfortunately 2 of the 5 birds in there were almost solid black bantams and it was dark when I got home so I had to hunt for them. The rooster and my old Japanese hen were in a pile of debris inside and the splash cochin hadn't gone into hiding yet like the 2 dark ones had

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

We sometimes get hurricanes. Our land is full of huge pine trees. I love the shade in summer. It gets really hot and humid here. When those storms come through I am pacing back a forth through the house watching them sway and checking the coop. Makes me a nervous wreck!

Yeah, we're definitely out of range for anything more than just the remains of a hurricane breaking up up here! But I definitely hear you on being a nervous wreck in those kinds of storms! I had to train myself not to show it so much because I was afraid I would traumatize my niece and nephew and make them terrified of storms. Now my niece has gone the opposite way and loves it when it storms, at least until there's a big BOOM of thunder and all of the sudden she's not so brave.

Oh yeah. All 5 were fine once I found them. I have the photos in the prefab thread of it when it was upright again but not straightened out

It wasn't a real tornado thankfully, just a really bad windstorm that was too much for the old frame and sent it toppling into the others. Unfortunately 2 of the 5 birds in there were almost solid black bantams and it was dark when I got home so I had to hunt for them. The rooster and my old Japanese hen were in a pile of debris inside and the splash cochin hadn't gone into hiding yet like the 2 dark ones had

Oh, that's good! And glad you were able to find everyone, too!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

One of Athena's eggs has drawn down as of this morning! The other looks much the same as it did yesterday, but I'm more hopeful now that the hatch times won't be too screwy!

And Juni's doing good this morning in her integration pen, thank goodness! My main concern with her was that she'd be depressed from not having anyone familiar around, but she seems not to mind with all the hustle and bustle of the main flock around her. She's a tough one, ready to fight anyone that gets in her personal space, even with a fence between them. I think she'll get along fine in there.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I've been distracted with other things today, just thought to go check on the incubator 45 minutes ago and we have a chick out and the other two eggs are air breathers! This chick is confidently Boba's and gives me confirmation that she is, indeed, a very dark Blue and I'm not just crazy looking at these dark chicks thinking they look bluish, as this one is more of a normal shade of Blue! (Excuse the terrible photo, it popped out of the egg just after this and was tucked against the wall where I couldn't get anything more than a grayish blob in a picture from that point on.)

Because I'd been distracted, I decided to go ahead and check on Athena's eggs again, and she has an external pip on one of hers, too! With chicks imminent, I went ahead and got the chick-safe waterer and food dish set up in there with her, at which point she must have decided her hunger was greater than her mothering instincts and hopped out of the nest to eat some of the chick feed. I thought, okay, this will be fine, I'll let her come out of the cage and poop away from the nest and then put her back into the cage where she can eat and drink and settle back onto her eggs, right?

Wrong! I closed her back in the cage and she began pacing into her nest across the eggs, back and forth. Fine, fine, fine, you can have a break out of the cage!!

5, maybe 10 minutes later max, a much shorter break than has been her usual, she hoofed it back to the nest with me following to close the cage door behind her, and little 'peep peep peeps' were audible from at least one of the eggs as I stepped into the coop after her. Goodness, I sure hope this whole thing works out after all this trouble!!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Second incubator egg just hatched. No picture this time around because baby is not in a spot I can get a clear shot of... again.

Athena's got one external and one internal pip in her two eggs. I was hoping the three incubator babies would be out before too late so that I could move them under her at sunset to spend the night bonding, but the last one is taking its time so I'm thinking first thing in the morning, right before sunrise, might be the better plan at this point. I can check on her throughout the day that way and make sure all is well with her and the babes.

 

[NanaK]

Sounds like a plan.

I think even if I took the babies out to her tonight, I'd still want to be there early am to be sure alls well.

Good luck!

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Second incubator egg just hatched. No picture this time around because baby is not in a spot I can get a clear shot of... again.

Athena's got one external and one internal pip in her two eggs. I was hoping the three incubator babies would be out before too late so that I could move them under her at sunset to spend the night bonding, but the last one is taking its time so I'm thinking first thing in the morning, right before sunrise, might be the better plan at this point. I can check on her throughout the day that way and make sure all is well with her and the babes.

You can always moved the pipped egg under her. That's what I like to do

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

You can always moved the pipped egg under her. That's what I like to do

I kept those eggs in the incubator so I could leg band those chicks to tell them apart from the chicks hatching under her.




The third chick hatched around midnight. I barely woke up enough to register that it had happened and look at the time. I've moved two of the babies out to Athena this morning and feel pretty good about it! I shined the flashlight over them to show them to her and she immediately started clucking for them. Then I put them by her in the nest and she lifted up ever so slightly and the babies instinctively scooted underneath her by themselves. Precious! The two eggs underneath her have still not hatched, but seem close, so I imagine they'll all be hatched out before too much longer.

I did keep one chick from the incubator inside because it has spraddle legs. First time I've seen that in any of these chicks! I went ahead and gave that chick an extra leg band to mark it apart from the others so that if it recovers I know which one had this issue for decisions on which birds to breed later on. And if it doesn't recover, well, I'll deal with that if need be.