Chicks!
- stephanieandjosh
- May 25, 2017
- 2 min read
Robot was cuckolded! At least 3 times and possibly once by a chipmunk (one of the chicks has stripes like a chipmunk). All three of the hens went broody one after the other, but it took us a while to realize because we’re new chicken farmers. We also didn’t realize exactly how it worked. Apparently, hens will lay a clutch of fertilized eggs which basically remain dormant until she starts incubating them so that all the chicks hatch around the same time. Unfortunately, Clucky and Plucky also started laying in the same nest box and all of the eggs got mixed up despite our efforts to try to mark them and remove the new eggs as they were laid. In the end, we just kept 5 which we had candled and knew were growing chicks.
After about 23 days, I had given up on them and was getting ready to bury them so that they wouldn’t rot in the coop, but when I went to check for the last time I found a motley-coloured baby! About 36 hours later a second egg hatched, and another within about 4 hours of that. The fourth egg hatched 5 days after the first with a lot of difficulty. By then Robot had started to get a bit fed up and was moving around a lot more so the chick may not have been able to position itself properly and probably wasn’t warm enough either. The last three are all gray and impossible to tell apart. They are also probably all Clucky’s…
It’s crazy that anything can live in one of those tiny eggs and how fast the chicks grow. It is also deceptive because they are so pathetic looking when they’re wet, but seem a lot larger and more capable as soon as they dry even though they’re just sticks of bone with some fluff on top.
We weren’t sure what to do with them. I was more inclined to leave them in the coop and let nature run its course, but Josh read online we should separate them and then reintegrate them back into the flock when they’re 4-6 weeks old so we brought them in the house and now they’re living in the office. Their constant chirping is so heartwarming, but we can’t get anything done because we love to watch them hopping around all day!
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