Rural Gardening: Broody Questions, 0 by kenboy

kenboy wrote:
I will never get rid of my incubators because I may need them as backup but you can not beat mother nature. I mostly hatch peafowl and use chickens to do it for me. I have two Brinsea 40 and I guess they are as good as you can get but they do not match a good brood hen. Peafowl eggs are much harder to hatch than chickens or other fowl and many peafowl breeders start their eggs under chickens. Brad Legg hatches about 3,000 peafowl every year and starts every egg for one week under a Cochin Bantam, then candles and puts them in an inc. Peachicks are very susceptible to worms and need to be kept off the ground until they are about three months old. I breed hybrids that have different genes and many will look the same but have very different background so I must hatch in a hatcher, in different compartments and then band them as soon as they hatch.

In the past I have used game chickens but most of the people who want their chicks and cock fighters. The last time someone pulled up in my driveway and asked about my game hens was on a Sunday morning and they looked like they had not had a bath in a week and asked if I wanted a beer. I said I don't start drinking until 10: AM. Maggi took one look at them and said those game chickens have got to go. Now I use Phoenix but sometime they are a little wild and will fly out of the nest so fast they will break the eggs. I have aways had my brood hens free range but now that we have a nursery they get on the plant benches and knock off plants, not good. So I am going with standard Cochins. I will also be trying a few Blue Orpingtons layers for eggs, in hops that they will sometimes go broody as backups.

I have built large pens now and have more room in each so I am going to have peafowl, chickens and pheasants all in the same pen. The pheasants lay a very small egg so I will be getting some small chickens to hatch their eggs, probably Cochins. So far I have the Red Golden and the Reeves pheasants and will be getting the Lady Amherst and Blue Ears. I will have eight pens so more room to grow.