The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: Roxy on June 10, 2011, 12:09:18 am
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On the whole the broodies have done well.
Hen on 4 duck eggs for a neighbour hatched two - one egg had a dead duckling in and the other had broken.
Big buff sussex had 8 hen eggs, hatched all 8 two days ago - stood on one and squashed it today. Nearly did another tonight, until I rescued it. Clumsy or what?!!
RIR hen had 8 eggs - now this was a disappointing hatch. 3 hatched, but very slow, over 24 hours. Looked at the other eggs, and one egg had all the shell missing and a dead chick in, another egg had a dead chick, and 3 eggs with nothing in.
Little wyandotte bantie, who hatches every summer hatched all 5 of her eggs.
Two more banties did well - one has 6 and the other 4, both have 3 cream legbar chicks. One of the chicks is diddy, and I suspect looking at its black beak, and black, hairy feet, it could be the egg from the miniature silkie.
One more bantie to hatch, she is sitting on 8 bantie eggs.
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Brilliant news ;D
i've had 100% fertility from all the hen/duck eggs but only a 47% hatch rate which is not very good,
and the 15 pheasant eggs i will never know about as the hut the broody hen was blown over in the winds last week and the eggs all smashed
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Oh, Cameron, sorry about your pheasant eggs - what a shame.
I was surprised the buff sussex hatched all her eggs to be honest......the pygmy billy goat decided the rabbit hutch she was sitting in, was a good place to scratch his head on! And after giving the hutch a good shaking about he finished it off with a good butting. I chased him off, but worried about the eggs. Poor hen must have sat tight!!!