It's been a while since i've updated on our broody hens and new peeps.
So, my original broody hen the Black Australorp, never did hatch out any eggs. i'm not sure where all her eggs went, but they slowly kept disappearing. i suspect she either accidentally crushed them, or rolled them out of the nesting box when she would get up for food and water. When she was down to two eggs my Speckled Sussex stole the nest from her. She finally gave up after almost two months of trying to hatch out some babies.
The Speckled Sussex took over the nest, but the date that the eggs should have hatched came and went and still no new babies. :(
So of my 4 broody hens who were sitting on over 25 eggs between them, we only ended up with 4 new peeps.
My mama hens have been very protective and made it very difficult to get any pictures of the new babies. Can you see the little guy peeking out? This mama hides out in the raspberry patch with her peep.
It's such a pretty little thing. It has almost all of it's feathers in now. Mama hen won't let me get close, and they are always on the move so it's tough to get a good picture of it.
My sweet black hen still has her three peeps. She keeps them under close watch, and is usually hiding around the morning glories that came up along the fence of my compost bin. They spend a lot of time scratching through it, and can easy hide among the foliage if necessary.
These little ones have their wing, shoulder and tail feathers....but still have a lot of fluff. i love seeing all the feather come in, and watching them change. Still trying to guess the breed of the little brown peep, and curious which are hens and which are roosters. Of course, i'm hoping for all hens. :)
We were really hoping to hatch out some new birds this summer. Several of our girls are getting too old to lay, and we lost a few of our good layers this spring. So when i saw an ad on craigslist for 4 sweet little Easter eggers i fw'd the ad to Kenan who was at work. He replied back that he'd already emailed about them. :)
So this past weekend, we picked up 4 new baby chicks to add to our flock. :)
They are
Easter Egger chickens. So should grow up to lay blue-green eggs. i have two Americana already, but one is 'retired' from egg laying. The other is a pretty good layer. We love collecting the blue green eggs though, and would love to have more. i'm really hoping i have one rooster in the bunch so that i can eventually breed out a few more with the blue-green egg trait. i've hatched out a few Americana-cross birds in the past, the rooster being an Old World Game bird, but they just lay plain light brown eggs. It would really be nice to have a hen and rooster pair that were of the same breed.
So, of the four new peeps these three look almost identical. They have blue/black feet and almost identical feather patterning. Their wings feathers are in, but not much else.
The last little guy is the only one with yellow feet. It also has shoulder feather and tail feathers. It's a black grey color, and the feather patterning is completely different from the other three. i'm hoping this indicates that this one is a rooster, and the other three are hens. Although with my luck, this will be the only hen and the other three roosters. i have no idea if the way the feathers come in indicts the sex, but i'm curious to see if there is any correlation.
The kids named this one Happy feet, because of the yellow feet. :)
We've been letting them roam around the yard a bit during the day. Our dog Sookie is an excellent baby sitter. She follows them everywhere and keeps a very close eye on them.
Miss Sage is their other baby sitter/ adoptive mama. She has been so thrilled to get to love on these peeps, since the mama hens won't let her get anywhere near the others .
They seem to love her too. They hop right up on her shoulders and try to snuggle under her hair. Reminding me of how the babies will get under mama hen's wings.
They were completely content to ride around on her back. That's Happy feet on her head. That's his favorite place to sit. :)
These guys are still inside under a heat lamp most of the day, but we've been bring them down to the coop for a few hours in the afternoon. We've been trying to get the used to the other birds, and the other birds used to them. They've done really well so far, and really seem to enjoy their time outside. The other birds have been very curious, but there has been no fighting/ pecking yet. Over the next week i'll increase there time down in the pen and will hopefully be able to move them outside permanently in another week or so once their feather are completely in. As sweet as they are i'm ready to get them out of my house. :)
