I'm so excited about showing picks of everyone! I don't have all the pictures t back yet, but these are the ones I do have. (Please forgive the messy hen house, we wanted to get in there during the cooler weather we've been having, but we didn't want to stir up nasty stuff for the broody's to breath in! )
This is a pic of Broody PBR#3.....the one under the nest boxes......she does not look very happy with me!
This message was edited Jun 22, 2008 9:16 PM
Here is the pic of the cage system for broody hens #4,#5,#6,and #7. It is in the hen house.
Here is Broody PBR #4 and #5.......on the 1st floor, left hand pen.
Another pic of #4 and #5 with the cage open.
Here is a good pic of our Broody Brown Leghorn (#6) and her bunk mate PBR #7. Don't they look cozy?
Here is PBR #8....She is on the 2nd floor, on the left hand side. I put her eggs in the pen off to the side before I put her in there, just in case we had yet another one go broody. It would appear that she has decided to lay on her nest in style though......she pushed all the eggs to the middle and planted herself there! When I took this picture, she hadn't gotten all the eggs worked under her yet.
A close up pic of broody #8
I don't have pics of broody barred rocks #1 and #2.....they were on another roll. Here are their babies......17 of them! (and our 3 remaining keets, they seem to get along well together)
Another chick shot.
Don't you just love fluffy broody hens!!!!
Yeah, I know! It still amazes me that they can spread and fluff out like they do to cover all of those eggs just right. : )
you just wait, it's evn cuter when they spread their wings to keep the chicks under!
looks great!
tf
Hey tf....I know. I went to check for chicks with PBR #1 and I missed one. When I pushed her up a little to look, she had it's little yellow body tucked under her wing. The second time I looked in her pen, she had 3 chicks poking up from under her. So cute!
Christy
a shameless bump : )
wow you are very lucky
Yeah, I know : ) Still can't figure how the moon and stars are smiling down on us so much!
Christy
so how many chicks you get this round
So far the count is 8 chicks. The ones that hatched out 7 chicks yesterday are still sitting on a huge pile of eggs, so I am hopeful yet. Of course, only one in the cage is doing the sitting.......the other seems to be in there for moral support and co-parenting at this point.
The one that hatched the 1 today is sitting on about 8 more eggs or so....I try not to disturb them too much. I'm going to have to pull the Brown Leghorn out.....she was coming right up to the front of the cage when I filled their food and water and she is not doing that now.....and she is no longer sitting on eggs. I have to get her out before she starves herself to death!
Broody #8 is still sitting on her eggs....she is a day or 2 behind the others. I started calling her princess because I tried putting another broody in with her and every time I turned around she was stealing the other hens eggs.....right out from under her. It got to be too much, so I switched it so she was by herself again.
Our last that we are letting sit on eggs is a RIR and she went nuts when I tried to move her to a broody pen, so I put her back in the nest box. For about a week her and a barred rock hen were sharing the nest, taking turns sitting on the eggs. It was pretty funny. I imagine Red put an end to that though and has taken over sitting on them full time. She's the only one that has went to peck at me when I messed with her eggs, so I was glad I had a heavy leather glove on. She was VERY nasty about it, but I guess I can't blame her!
Christy
lol to funny............ the barnyard stories.
yeah I know, I have had a lot of 'now what are you up to?, and what have you done now?' moments with all of this.
Christy
you are gonna have a ton of little fluff balls congratulations
i want an update!
yep and pics
YEAH!
hmmmmmmmmmm where is Miss Christy, she been AOWL also.
wow everone has been AWOL
yeah, been slow here for sure... i bet it startts picking back up...
well lets get this party started then
here is a chook that went broody in her first year twice
And what is your broody beauty's name?
Finally got Pictures of my chickens and my son... OK my sons chickens and roo's.
and here is him holding my favorite chicken, she is so sweet and gentle
and the third pix he was happy to find two eggs...
that is adorable
her name is whitey as u can tell we have a very broad range of names at my house LOL
Hi Christy - love your chick pics! Are they drop dead cute or what!
Did you build those cages by bending mesh into a rectangle and cutting an opening for the door.?
What age do you put them in there - the chicks look quite tiny, so do they have heating?
I've got my little bunch still in the heated brooder, but they'll need more room as they grow. Still too cold outside as it's winter here.
.
Dordles- Does about two weeks after planting make sense? Or when they're mostly fledged, whichever comes first. Is that mid November for you? Sounds way wrong. They will probably be OK on sunny spring days with just top feathers, but until they have [panty-feathers is what we call 'em at our house] I wouldn't let them out all night. Their fluff doesn't shed water or cold very well.
Sorry, wasn't addressed to me- I blabbed....
This message was edited Aug 5, 2008 6:37 PM
No worries, grownut - nice to talk to you all. My babies hatched out on Sunday, so are only 3 days old.
Our temperatures will gradually warm up until November/December, by which time they will be 3-4 months old. We are almost into Spring now.
I'm just not sure when they can go outside - seems a long time to have them confined. They will be transferrring to an 'ark' from their brooder so will be exposed to the weather to some extent.
We don't have any predators here apart from the odd hawk luckily. Some of the posts I've read concerning badgers, ferrets, foxes killing chickens etc are awful. They seem to be able to get in whatever people do. Do you have badgers in the US?
Yes we have badgers--mostly in the upper states. They don't seem to play as large a part in folklore here as in Europe--I don't know why.
Catscan, shall I send the 1st badger I see to lower state? lol. Have weasel or too & coyotes I wouldn't mind giving up.....
hint, hint.....lol
Great pix's! Make my heart warm..
Well to you. Peafowl, we are lower--but to the great uninhabited (LOL) East we are high--on par with Ohio! Which has badgers. But I have never in my life seen a badger in the wild--coyotes, yes, bears, yes, even weasels. I do know that dachshund means "badger dog' cause they used them to go into badger dens. Since dachshunds are very popular in the suburbs, maybe they have chased away all the badgers:0)
