Many thanks for that advice, Steve.
The three girls are sharing two nests in the coop. I think that they are quite secure. Two came out for a stroll and feed at different times today.
At the last count we had 22 eggs. How many are fertilised I don't know. I shall try to take a count tomorrow and mark them all as you suggest. Would a pencil do the trick until I can get a fine marker as you suggest, do you think? We are in the sticks out here and such refinements can be hard to find out of town. I don't mind the pecking but I don't want to frighten them away from the nests. One of the broodies was attacked by a dog when she wandered away to lay the day after she came to us and she's still rather nervous.
I hope that at least one will remain sitting when hatching begins and I shall move any abandoned eggs to her. My wife suggests we take the poults away from the hens and keep them under mosquito netting on the back porch for three weeks. After one week they will have anti mozzie medication and two weeks after that they can enjoy some open space during daylight. I'm inclined to let the mothers be mothers if the old boy leaves the poults alone but they will still need the netting and medication. My wife's view is that they will soon forget about the poults and start mating again. We are told, by the way, that mating continues all year here but I'll believe it when it happens.
It seems sensible to buy an incubator to use as a backup if maternal instincts fail, or for part of each future clutch or for all of the eggs. Websites here are poor at SEO and it's taken me weeks to track down a supplier. No-one overseas that I have contacted is willing to export. Finally, I found a company on the edge of Bangkok that makes all sizes of incubator from home production to chicken factory so that problem will be solved as soon as I order one.
This is the first time around the block for us and each day brings more learning, more fun and, sometimes, more concerns. We end daylight each day by watching them from our grass roofed gazebo until it's time for them to be shut away. That hour teaches us many things about the personality of each one. When the first hen began to sit one of the original stags, still only about 15 weeks old, went to the coop to see what was going on. I found him sitting on straw beside her nest, apparently trying to discover what pleasure she was enjoying. After about an hour he decided that there was nothing in it for him and left.
We are having great fun with this venture and, boy, things move quickly.