- May 4, 2010
- 51
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It's been a good few months since I last posted here, been busy building pens, looking through catalogs and otherwise enabling my chicken addiction.
I just started raising chickens this year and and now that my chickens are older (mass chicken-birthday in march) I have a few questions.
I consider myself blessed by the chicken-gods for getting no less then four broodies this first spring, but my problem is a) two of the bantie hens are broody over the same clutch, so they're literally sitting together in the same box on a monster clutch of 16 or so eggs. Will this effect their hatch rate or worse still, will the broodies fight over the babies? If that's the case, how can I separate them without scaring them off? b) one of my standard BO's has been trying to steal their nest for herself, but routinely snacks while she sits - resulting in egg goo all over the remainder of the eggs. I've taken a few eggs from the bantie nest and put them off on their own, which she took to right away, but the snacking persists despite my efforts to put food within pecking distance of the laying boxes. Why is she doing this?
I've also bought myself a simple 50 egg foam bator from my feedstore that works like a charm - we've hatched out a few small clutches of maybe 4-5 eggs to get the hang of it, but I always notice that the babies we hatch out are bigger then their parents were at the same age even though the parents are both bantams. My major concern in this is that they seem to be having difficulty getting out of the egg simply because they're so big - is this normal? Our most recent hatch is a precious handful of silkie eggs our hen laid before we had to put her down when a fox didn't finish the job. They're hatching beautifully so far, but I think the newest one's feet might be a little defective because he ended up a fair bit bigger then the egg itself. He's still only minutes old at the moment, and I'm hoping once he fluffs out and rests he'll have the strength to use his feet.
Thanks in advance guys!
~WW
In other news: More silkies!
I just started raising chickens this year and and now that my chickens are older (mass chicken-birthday in march) I have a few questions.
I consider myself blessed by the chicken-gods for getting no less then four broodies this first spring, but my problem is a) two of the bantie hens are broody over the same clutch, so they're literally sitting together in the same box on a monster clutch of 16 or so eggs. Will this effect their hatch rate or worse still, will the broodies fight over the babies? If that's the case, how can I separate them without scaring them off? b) one of my standard BO's has been trying to steal their nest for herself, but routinely snacks while she sits - resulting in egg goo all over the remainder of the eggs. I've taken a few eggs from the bantie nest and put them off on their own, which she took to right away, but the snacking persists despite my efforts to put food within pecking distance of the laying boxes. Why is she doing this?
I've also bought myself a simple 50 egg foam bator from my feedstore that works like a charm - we've hatched out a few small clutches of maybe 4-5 eggs to get the hang of it, but I always notice that the babies we hatch out are bigger then their parents were at the same age even though the parents are both bantams. My major concern in this is that they seem to be having difficulty getting out of the egg simply because they're so big - is this normal? Our most recent hatch is a precious handful of silkie eggs our hen laid before we had to put her down when a fox didn't finish the job. They're hatching beautifully so far, but I think the newest one's feet might be a little defective because he ended up a fair bit bigger then the egg itself. He's still only minutes old at the moment, and I'm hoping once he fluffs out and rests he'll have the strength to use his feet.
Thanks in advance guys!
~WW
In other news: More silkies!
