During the past 2 days so much has happened in my backyard that I'm still in awe! My bantam hen went broody three weeks ago, shortly after her my chinese blue breasted quail also went broody and shortly after the quail my silkie hen also went broody!
Two days ago I went out to look at the aviary birds and found my male quail dragging a chick across the aviary by the head! I quickly grabbed it and brought it inside! It had blood over its right eye and the other eye was closed! After some while under a heat lamp it started breathing properly and opened its left eye! I mixed some sugar water and gave it some drops. Shortly afterwards it started moving around a bit and went to sleep. Now it chirps constantly when its awake, eats a lot, drinks a lot, sleeps a lot and also poops a lot which is GREAT! It was the only quail egg that has hatched up to now so it looks like it will be alone until its old enough to go back into the aviary. The sweetest thing about the chick is that when I make a peeping sound it runs towards me and tries crawling under my hand! Here it is-
I used the thermometer tip to show it where to peck for food
Now it pecks all by its self!
My bantam hen!
Today my bantam hens' eggs hatched. She already once hatched some of her eggs but the chicks disappeared one night and we think it was rats since we had a rat problem at that time! I think 6 eggs have already hatched out of about 8 or 9 but I'm not sure! Two silkie eggs have hatched which I smuggled under her before my silkie went broody! So now I have a few normal bantam chicks and two silkie chicks! Here they are with their mother-
The silkie chick-it has yellow feet which is weird but I don't think that y silkies are pure breed so I'm not that surprised! But as long as it has fluffy feathers its a silkie to me! I don't care about comb or colour!
All the chicks are brown with black markings except two! This means that the two yellow/white ones would have to be the silkies right? There is only one problem.. one of the yellow ones doesn't have feathered feet. Now the combs of my silkie hens are not perfect.. one has a normal single comb while the other has sort of a silkie comb but not exactly so I think maybe some old genes from a mixed silkie might have caused the clean legs! I can't wait to see them grow up
For now these are the only chicks but since my silkie has been sitting a while I expect some more in the next few days! And my second silkie hen has also decided to go broody two days ago so I used the opportunity and put some quail eggs under her! I one of the eggs has broken but the rest seems to be doing well so I hope she will hatch some quail and chicks for me!
Two days ago I went out to look at the aviary birds and found my male quail dragging a chick across the aviary by the head! I quickly grabbed it and brought it inside! It had blood over its right eye and the other eye was closed! After some while under a heat lamp it started breathing properly and opened its left eye! I mixed some sugar water and gave it some drops. Shortly afterwards it started moving around a bit and went to sleep. Now it chirps constantly when its awake, eats a lot, drinks a lot, sleeps a lot and also poops a lot which is GREAT! It was the only quail egg that has hatched up to now so it looks like it will be alone until its old enough to go back into the aviary. The sweetest thing about the chick is that when I make a peeping sound it runs towards me and tries crawling under my hand! Here it is-
I used the thermometer tip to show it where to peck for food
Now it pecks all by its self!
My bantam hen!
Today my bantam hens' eggs hatched. She already once hatched some of her eggs but the chicks disappeared one night and we think it was rats since we had a rat problem at that time! I think 6 eggs have already hatched out of about 8 or 9 but I'm not sure! Two silkie eggs have hatched which I smuggled under her before my silkie went broody! So now I have a few normal bantam chicks and two silkie chicks! Here they are with their mother-
The silkie chick-it has yellow feet which is weird but I don't think that y silkies are pure breed so I'm not that surprised! But as long as it has fluffy feathers its a silkie to me! I don't care about comb or colour!
All the chicks are brown with black markings except two! This means that the two yellow/white ones would have to be the silkies right? There is only one problem.. one of the yellow ones doesn't have feathered feet. Now the combs of my silkie hens are not perfect.. one has a normal single comb while the other has sort of a silkie comb but not exactly so I think maybe some old genes from a mixed silkie might have caused the clean legs! I can't wait to see them grow up
For now these are the only chicks but since my silkie has been sitting a while I expect some more in the next few days! And my second silkie hen has also decided to go broody two days ago so I used the opportunity and put some quail eggs under her! I one of the eggs has broken but the rest seems to be doing well so I hope she will hatch some quail and chicks for me!
