The latest chicks
I had a whole passel of Silkies go broody this summer. Some of them give up, two more go broody. The usual, in other words. I’m not letting them reproduce this year- I have so many Silkies. I did give them five of Cheeks’ eggs between them though.
Drama central! If any of them stood up to adjust themselves, another one would rob an egg. Every morning most of them would go out for breakfast, and then there would be lamentations when they came back and their eggs had been swiped by another hen.
With all this egg roulette, it’s a wonder any hatched- they were a little too well attended. By luck of the draw or else quiet persistence, this one brown lady had the eggs on hatch day. Two hatched, and one died, and then another hatched late. Phew! I’m awfully glad there’s two, because chicks do so much better when they have siblings.
Mama is SO relaxed, and just because it’s so easy to do, I’ve popped them into the greenhouse. At night I collect them in their cardboard box and lock them into a coop, and in the morning I slide them out, peeping out of their mom’s fluff at me, and I carry the box into the GH, where they spend the day without any conflict, competition, or threats.
This is the summer of Cheeklings. Last summer was a raft of Puffcheeks’ offspring, and now all those Pufflings are grownups, sitting on sawhorses and laying eggs. This year, when Cheeks recovered and started laying eggs again, I promptly set all of them under hens, to save Cheeks’ legacy. Now I have lots of them. Seven? Of course some will be roos, and some look less like Cheeks than their father, but I should have some Jr. Cheeks hens.