Babies

I’m having kids! Well not really. I have a friend who wanted to incubate some eggs so I gave her a dozen and she happily reported that after five days candling reviled all eggs are developing chicks. Blue isn’t shooting blanks.

I have five varieties of hens and Blue is an Araucana. Araucanas/Americanas have blue colored legs and the hens lay blue eggs. It will be interesting to see how Blue’s genes mix with the other hens.

On the same topic I have one Orpington hen that has become broody. Every day I see her sitting on a clutch of eggs and I feel bad removing her from the next box and collecting the eggs to find her back there the next day sitting on a new batch of eggs. I’m letting her have her way. She probably has six eggs under her right now and I’ll let her sit and hatch some young.

One may think I’m crazy for doing this, but I realized that all my hens will be a year old on August 4, which means they will be molting this winter and their egg production will decline greatly. Hens born in May will start producing eggs in September of October. If I get roosters, which I’m sure will be 60% of the hatch, October is a good time to slaughter. I hate cleaning chickens when it’s warm out and there are flies buzzing the scene.

Aside from all that, this topic will give me at least a few more blog posts and I will share photos.