Yesterdays surprise came in the form of three new poults hatching.
We have 3 hens that have been sitting on eggs for over a month and a half. Well there were many blanks, eggs that didn't hatch as these were the first time eggs for all of the hens (3). We had one hen sitting on 11 eggs, she began tossing out bad eggs maybe 3 weeks into her nesting. I installed a divider into the chicken coop so the second hen wouldn't be bothered by the tom or other members of our varied flock. We took the hen that had been nesting in the dog house and moved her into the same area, no problem. The 3rd hen started laying eggs under a golden dewdrop tree/bush in the yard, we gathered up several eggs as she layed them then put her and her eggs into the same area with the other 2 hens, no problem. Then one day things began to change, the first hen and the second hen switched places, no problem. silly things over
no way, one hen started gathering eggs from the others nest, no problem, it didn't seem to matter to the other hen. The one hen only had 3 eggs under her so we added 4 silkie eggs to her nest, all seemed happy.
When the 3 poults hatched the one hen which had been sitting on blanks moved over with the new momma hen to help with the new poults, the 3rd hen continued to sit on her mixture of eggs. This morning we thought it would be an adventure to let the new poults out in the yard, well it seemed too early, even thou the sun was in full force the ground dew seemed to cool for the little ones.
Both of the hens were out, the new momma and her assistant. When the new momma and chicks were put back in the coop the assistant mom decided she would stay out, that was good, she is now being attended to by Tom, he has been by himself with the varied flock so now he has someone to strut for that might be interested in his strutting.
Perhaps latter today when the dew is off of the grass (what grass there is left) we might bring the new poults out for another stroll. Something we had tried to start replacements for our egg layers was getting some eggs from our friend who had a rooster with his hens and placing them under the bantam hen when she started sitting, well that worked, we had 3 regular chicks hatch for that sitting and 3 bantam chicks. One of the new chicks is a rooster which I was hoping for so now we will separate the flock so we can begin to raise our own replacement egg hens.
It seems right now that we have things going like we had hoped, more turkey poults for trade and eventually for the table and replacements coming along for the egg layering hens. Oh yeah, the old egg laying hens will just hang around till their time comes, they have earned that.
