[Roxy]

We have friends who we have known years - lovely couple who love animals, but they just have horses and dogs - oh and a big spider and parrots etc.
 
They have had a few hens in the past, but sadly the fox got them from the stable yard.  Last year, she told me they had some eggs they were hoping to hatch. She took me round to an empty stable and pointed at a wooden crate in the corner, lined with straw.  I peered in, and yes, there were six eggs.  I enquired as to the whereabouts of the broody hen?  What hen?  We have no hens.  She was deadly serious with this reply!!  Trying to keep a straight face, I asked how she thought the eggs would hatch. Apparantly, the farmer whose yard she rents, gave her six eggs and told her to wait for them to hatch .....worst of it was, she had been following his instructions to the letter, and carefully turning the eggs each day.  I laughted until I cried, as I tried to tell the poor woman that she had been the victim of the farmers joke.  I just wonder how long she would have carried on with her eggs.  We still laugh about her "hatching experience"!
 
Anyway, I gave her two of my ex batts and a cockerel only last week, and yesterday got a phone call to say the hen is sitting on 6 eggs and this time she hopes to hatch some chicks.  Fingers crossed it will be successful ....well, it must stand a better chance than her last effort, surely!!!!

[Bionic]

Roxy, that made me laugh, thanks 

[Torrin37]

 

[happygolucky]

  , just goes to show, we all have to learn some how, I know so little too!!

[Bodger]

I've actually had intelligent people who think that they have a ticking time bomb when they've bought fertile hatching eggs but I haven't been tempted to take the p***. Quite simply, they haven't realised that fertile eggs are dormant until incubation begins and heat is added. I don't blame them in the least, while to 'our sort'  the keeping and rearing of livestock is 'simples' , to the uninitiated its an absolute mystery.

[Roxy]

  I am just wondering how and why 6 eggs came to be under the hen - there is only two of them.  I am wondering if Alison was too scared to put her hand under to get the eggs, especially if the hen turned broody and pecked!!!  The hens could want for nothing, lovely secure run and house, the best feeder and drinker, and filled to the top with feed and water.  Those two hens will be enormous!!  I get the feeling she will pick them up and cuddle them.  Although we have warned her to leave the broody where she is

[chrismahon]

Reminds me how little I knew about chickens when I started over 6 years ago. I'd have done that! Still laughed about it though.