Little Cookie is happily clucking away with her BIG family. My final count:
6 lav orps
4 choc cuckoo orps
5 black orps (2 are from Oopsie, so who knows what genes are in there. One of Oopsie's may actually be a blue, but I can't tell while it's under Cookie.)
1 sexlink hybrid female or a pure black orp (Egg looked like it came from my Dominique, but chick looks like a purebred, so I marked it with red leg band to examine later)
2 sexlink EE females (green leg bands)
3 penciled rocks from shipped eggs
I did an egg-topsy & discovered that one of the EEs was malpositioned. It was fully formed & the yolk was completely absorbed. It internally pipped upside down & either drowned or bled. All the other eggs hatched, so overall it was a good hatch. 22/24. (The other death was caused by a clumsy roo jumping into Cookie's nestbox the day before hatching..)
Don't know how she does it, but Cookie has 21 LF chicks under her! She's a bantam..... but what a spread!
Often I'm not seeing any chicks under the back up Mama Heating Pad. They're all squeezing under Cookie. It reminds me of the Nutcracker's Lady with the big skirt. The chicks are under, on top of, or running around her.
Thankfully chickens can't count! She went broody about a week before the hatch date. I slipped 2 eggs under her on day 18. (A roo trampled one.) Cookie hatched the remaining egg, but WHAT AN EGG! I kept slipping more chicks under her as they hatched, so she must think she's Superhen by hatching 21 chicks from a single egg in less than a week!
We also hatched 15 quail. Those have a heat lamp.
6 lav orps
4 choc cuckoo orps
5 black orps (2 are from Oopsie, so who knows what genes are in there. One of Oopsie's may actually be a blue, but I can't tell while it's under Cookie.)
1 sexlink hybrid female or a pure black orp (Egg looked like it came from my Dominique, but chick looks like a purebred, so I marked it with red leg band to examine later)
2 sexlink EE females (green leg bands)
3 penciled rocks from shipped eggs
I did an egg-topsy & discovered that one of the EEs was malpositioned. It was fully formed & the yolk was completely absorbed. It internally pipped upside down & either drowned or bled. All the other eggs hatched, so overall it was a good hatch. 22/24. (The other death was caused by a clumsy roo jumping into Cookie's nestbox the day before hatching..)
Don't know how she does it, but Cookie has 21 LF chicks under her! She's a bantam..... but what a spread!
Often I'm not seeing any chicks under the back up Mama Heating Pad. They're all squeezing under Cookie. It reminds me of the Nutcracker's Lady with the big skirt. The chicks are under, on top of, or running around her.
Thankfully chickens can't count! She went broody about a week before the hatch date. I slipped 2 eggs under her on day 18. (A roo trampled one.) Cookie hatched the remaining egg, but WHAT AN EGG! I kept slipping more chicks under her as they hatched, so she must think she's Superhen by hatching 21 chicks from a single egg in less than a week!
We also hatched 15 quail. Those have a heat lamp.
