Chicks
During April we suddenly noticed that one of the chickens (Big Gwen)
had been sitting in the egg box for a number
of days. On lifting her up we found that she was sitting on eleven eggs. We marked the eggs with a pencil and placed her back on top of the eggs. A quick read of our chicken books informed us that we could expect the
chickens to arrive after three weeks from laying. The other chickens continued to lay their eggs nearby and their eggs eventually made
their way to the marked eggs, which we removed
on a daily basis.
Closer to the hatching time I made a wire pen structure
so that she could rear the chicks without disturbance from the other hens
and particularly the cockerals. While
at the same time the chicks obtained some security. The hatching
of the chicks took place over a period of five
days. There were three who started breaking the
eggs, but for some reason never managed to break out and died in within
their shells. The third one I tried to help by breaking away more of
the shell (against the advice of the chicken books),
but it still died. Two other eggs were never
fertilised and came to nothing. Eventually we ended up with
six chicks (two white and four black). The last
chick was very small and couldn't seem to hop back, into the egg box, whenever the mother retired with the other chicks after a small outing. Twice we found
it lifeless on the floor, however after a few hours in the incubator (where
some duck eggs were incubating) seem to revive
it and it was placed back with the mother. There was never a third
time as it managed to get stronger and was able to jump into the egg box.
